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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27822388">Or.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeitgeistic/pseuds/zeitgeistic'>zeitgeistic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst and Feels, Animal Death, Department of Mysteries, Forced Bonding, Head Auror Ron Weasley, Love, M/M, Mania, Mental Health Issues, Other: See Story Notes, Pining, Regret, Secret Relationship, Sex Magic, Unspeakable Draco Malfoy, Unspeakable Harry Potter, Unspeakable Hermione Granger, mostly happy ending, read the notes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:33:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,111</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27822388</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeitgeistic/pseuds/zeitgeistic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He should've told him. Or he should've quit. Or he should've said something. Or he should've stopped it. Or he should've done something. Or he should've said anything.</p><p>Or. Or. Or.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>271</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>471</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>25 Days of Draco and Harry 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. knowledge of before</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The premise of this story is a forced/accidental love bond. It is <b>not</b> between Harry and Draco. There are no sexual "actions" between the two bonded, but there is going to be a lot of angst caused by this bond until it's resolved. If you can't bear the idea of Harry or Draco being accidentally bonded to someone else, this is not the story for you.</p><p>If you are in the mood for an angsty holiday season to round out your 2020, read on! </p><p> </p><p>This work was based on an unfinished idea for HD-Erised many years ago, so it's loosely inspired by a prompt by winterstorm from 2014.</p><p><b>This is currently un-beta'd.</b> I will probably go back at some point and tidy this up, but for the moment, it is the raw fic. I think it works for this particular fic, but just an FYI.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Draco looks like magic. Like the epitome of it, whatever that means. He looks like electricity could go out all over the world, and Draco would bring in enough light to see him from space. Draco is so vibrant and alive that surely even Muggles could see the aura he gives off, but are so overwhelmed by it that they give it names like St Elmo’s Fire and Aurora Borealis. From great distances, Draco’s felt even there. </p>
<p>This is what Harry thinks the morning before Draco is permanently soul-bonded to Hermione. </p>
<p>He’s still in bed at the time, in that drowsy, foggy, delicious state between sleeping and waking when one’s imagination is so fiercely in control that dreams give off visceral sensations that anyone would swear is real. Outside their flat, the holiday lights over London Bridge are shining, bright with festive cheer even at this hour.</p>
<p>In this half-state, he gets a feeling that something is coming— a blackened, rushing sort of feeling that makes him shudder momentarily before he shakes it off and goes back to running his fingers over the bones in Draco’s back. Draco curls up into it, presses his face further into his pillow. They have only been dating for six weeks now, but it feels like this is it; it feels like if this were to end, then so would Harry. How is it that he’s known Draco nearly his whole life, and he’s wanted him so fucking much for six years, and he never even kissed him before six weeks ago? </p>
<p>He should tell Draco he loves him. Harry knows better than anyone how quickly lives can alter course or even end. It’s why he’s not an Auror anymore. Aurors hit with a spell that makes them an emotional mess whenever they try to use an offensive spell aren’t suitable for fieldwork, after all. He’s grateful that the Department wanted to take him in afterwards— a bored Harry Potter is a dangerous Harry Potter— but he misses the time with Ron, and he misses the feeling of usefulness he got from being an Auror. </p>
<p>Draco rolls his head towards Harry and blinks sleepily at him. He yawns and doesn’t even bother to cover his mouth. Harry likes the way it makes his face scrunch; it’s heart-stopping to know that Draco wouldn’t let just anyone see his face scrunch like that.</p>
<p>“Hey, Potter,” he says.</p>
<p>“Hey, Malfoy,” Harry says back. He likes how soft both their voices are right now, like it’s an outward expression of how they feel towards one another.</p>
<p>Draco smiles at him, casts a <i>Tempus</i> with a flick of his wrist (time-related spells are the only wandless ones he’s any good at), and then yawns out, “Bollocks. I’ve gotta go.” </p>
<p>He rolls out of bed and is in the shower before Harry can even respond, so Harry just sinks back into Draco’s bed and snoozes for a little while. They always stagger their entrance times after a night together to avoid suspicion. The non-fraternisation policy within Ministry departments is even more severe in the Department of Mysteries. The inherent dangers in their research make it imperative that no flyaway emotions are fogging up their auras or working environments, and Harry already struggles with flyaway emotions anyway. With Harry, flyaway emotions are already trouble enough.</p>
<p>If they continue this way, one of them is going to have to quit. Both of them are desperate not to.</p>
<p>It’s not the Aurors, but in the seven years since Harry has become an Unspeakable, after two years of training and initiation, he has become obsessed with his work. He’s thirty-three. This is his life now. The thought of ending it, even for Draco, makes his heart hurt.</p>
<p>The water cuts off, Draco comes out still towelling his hair. Harry takes a moment to watch his arse flex as he walks to the wardrobe and pulls out his work trousers, shirt, and robes. The heady, oppressive feeling of a thousand protective spells from the wool fabric invades the bedroom. </p>
<p><i>‘You can always tell an Unspeakable,’</i> Ron says. <i>‘You lot think you’re clever, but anytime you walk into a room, everyone gets a headache. Like having to sit next to someone wearing too much perfume in an interdepartmental meeting.’</i></p>
<p>Draco dresses, kisses Harry on the mouth, and is out the door and in an economical amount of time. Harry curls onto Draco’s side of the bed, presses his nose into the scent left behind on his pillow, and sets his wand alarm to snooze for twenty more minutes.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. phronemomania</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>At work, Harry is deep in an experiment with his favourite pair of Wolpertingers and their newest litter when there’s a knock at the door leading to his workroom in the Love Chamber. He sets Nigella, the mother, back in her pen and pushes his hair back from his face. His neck is stiff from bending over all morning, and he rolls it on his shoulders before standing and walking to the door. Nigella chirps up at him and he smiles, feeling a sharp, warm breeze of <i>Hedwig</i>. Nigella always makes him miss her so fiercely.</p>
<p>On the other side of the threshold, Hermione is holding two steaming cups of coffee. “Take a break?” she asks. “I just need a mo’ away from Malfoy.”</p>
<p>Harry smirks, accepts the cup, and stands aside for her to enter. “Mania research not going well?” he asks.</p>
<p>“Going <i>too</i> well,” Hermione says, sitting down at one of the stools by his work table. “Malfoy’s found a link between mania and magical people who’ve handled a haunted artefact.”</p>
<p>Harry sets his cup down. “Like a horcrux?” </p>
<p>Hermione frowns. “That’s where my mind was going, too. But I’m thinking of the Brain Room now, actually.”</p>
<p>They both take a moment to frown, thinking of Ron, and they both pointedly say nothing.</p>
<p>“There’s more to it than that,” says Harry. “It happens to plenty of people who’ve never touched a magical artefact at all, much less a haunted one. Lots of people are born with them.”</p>
<p>“I know,” she says, “there’s a link somewhere. I just hope I find it before Malfoy does. I don’t know if I can take his smugness much longer. Ron’s just called another holiday for the DMLE; cleared the whole department and locked himself in his office to study the case notes on that Fudge assassination.”</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>phronemomania</b>: (n) an uncontrollable, obsessive need to think.]</p>
</blockquote>“The high-profile ones tend to set him off,” Harry agrees.<p>They both sip their coffee and frown down at their hands. It’s been a year since Ron’s last manic episode, and that one only lasted three days. In the years since Hogwarts, his tendency towards mania when caseloads get tough has improved dramatically from those first few months after the War when he’d lock himself in his flat for an entire week and only come out with a solved murder case. His solve rate, even as a trainee Auror, is higher than wizards who’ve been on the force for decades. It’s helped his career, but that doesn’t make it okay if it bothers Ron so much to go through it, and it does, sometimes. Not all the time, but sometimes.</p>
<p><i>‘It’s not the thinking that bothers me,’</i> Ron sometimes says. <i>‘It’s that I can’t decide when I want to do it. I hate that there are nights when I can’t read my daughter a bedtime story because I just...can’t.’ </i></p>
<p>“Anyway,” says Hermione. “I’m going to put in a requisition for one of the brains. If Malfoy’s link is actually causal and not circumstantial, then there might be something to those.”</p>
<p>Harry snorts. “Good luck getting that approved. Those things have been floating untouched in that tank since they cleaned up after us. I imagine Apex won’t be amused by you wanting to mess with them.”</p>
<p>“Well,” Hermione says primly, “Apex will just have to go fuck themself. You can’t impede the search for knowledge. Even <i>Apex</i> knows that, the bureaucratic jackass.”</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>gnosiophiliia</b>: (n) an obsessive love of knowledge.]</p>
</blockquote>A banging comes at the door. “Granger!” Draco yells. “You get your arse out here right now and clean this shit up or I’m coming in there! It looks like the Library at Alexandria exploded on my goddamned desk!”<blockquote>
  <p>[<b>ataxophobia</b>: (n) a fear of disorder or untidiness.]</p>
</blockquote>“Oh, bugger off!” Hermione calls back. “I’m not your house-elf, I don’t come when you call!”<p>“If you were, you’d have already cleaned up this fucking mess. This is my office, too, you know! Hurricanes leave rooms in better states!”</p>
<p>“You think he’ll ever get your name right?” Harry asks.</p>
<p>“So long as he doesn’t go back to Greasley or Wanger, I’m perfectly happy to be called whatever,” she says. She sighs. “Suppose I’d better go pick up the books I left on his desk. There were only a couple, honestly, he gets so riled up about the minutest things…”</p>
<p>“Good luck,” Harry says, smiling into his coffee cup. </p>
<p>Hermione levers herself up from the stool and drains the last of her coffee. “Obviously I’ll need it.”</p>
<p>She swings the door open and Draco glares in at both of them. “Harbouring a known desk desecrator,” he observes to Harry. And then to Hermione, “Just because you’ve run out of space on your side of the room doesn’t mean you can take up all of mine.”</p>
<p>“Go fuck yourself, Malfoy,” Hermione says primly as she walks past him into the circular antechamber separating their sub-departments.</p>
<p>Draco turns and calls over his shoulder. “Don’t need to. Had someone else do it for me last night.”</p>
<p>“Dildos don’t count, Malfoy!” says Hermione, and then the door to the Thought Chamber closes behind her. The room spins around Draco as the doors change position, causing his hair to lift in the subsequent breeze. It stops and his hair flutters down again. He winks at Harry before turning and following Hermione back to the Thought Chamber, through a different door entirely.</p>
<p>It’s the last time Harry sees him before he loses him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. anthropophobia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><i>‘Solve the manias,’</i> Draco says, <i>‘And you’ll solve the phobias.’</i></p><p>They don’t need to be <i>solved</i>, Harry thinks. They need to be <i>moderated</i>. </p><p>There’s nothing wrong with being afraid of something; maybe there’s something wrong with letting it control your life. And anyway, he’ll never tell Draco, but he thinks that’s all too generalised to be true. Harry has fears just like anyone else, and there are times he’s sure they were actual phobias. He doesn’t really think that being terrified of Voldemort or war in general or even being expelled from Hogwarts was a bad thing. It’s the <i>not-being-able-to-act</i> in the face of those fears that upsets balances.</p><p>Right now, and for the past three weeks, for example, Harry has been terrified of scaring Draco off by accidentally bursting out with, <i>I love you, I love you, I swear to God I can’t live without you, I’ve loved you for years, and I’m going to go mad from the stress of actually, finally being with you, despite all the years I flirted with you and you flirted back and we did that stupid dance of will-we-won’t-we and—</i></p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>anthropophobia</b>: (n) the fear of people, and being rejected by them]</p>
</blockquote>Mitchell and Fields walk by Harry’s open door on their way to lunch, and are halfway out the door to the antechamber before Randy, the male Wolpertinger, decides to start chirping. The noise catches their attention and they turn back to poke their heads into Harry’s workroom. They leave the door ajar, which they <i>know</i> is strictly forbidden. Love is the one chamber that is never to be left accessible to unsupervised Unspeakables without proper clearance, but Harry’s tired of telling them. As the colleagues with the lab closest to the door, he can definitely say that Unspeakables never follow rules if it doesn’t suit them, and keeping the door to Love shut suits hardly anyone.<p>“Oho! At it again with your rabbits?” asks Mitchell.</p><p>They step inside the lab to pet Randy, Nigella, and their three kits—which Hermione named James, Jean, and Bilius because she thinks she’s funny—and Harry tries to compose himself so that ‘thinking romantic thoughts about a fellow Unspeakable’ is not written all over his face.</p><p>“Jean is starting to favour Granger-Weasley,” says Fields. “Bit of extra fluff to that one’s tail.” </p><p>Harry rolls his eyes at him. “Don’t even,” he says. “She would destroy you.”</p><p>Fields laughs good-naturedly. “Wouldn’t dream of saying that in front of her, mind. How’s the love protection research going, Potter?”</p><p>Harry perks up. “I saw a tinge to Bilius’ aura when he coughed on a piece of carrot,” says Harry. “Nigella’s flared up, and his tinted closer to the colour of hers. There may be some sort of inherent link between parents and children, or people who love one another, that shares magic with the one in need, but I can’t figure out what activates the link because Nigella’s aura didn’t flare when Jean fell off the table, nor did it—”</p><p>“We’re on the way to lunch, not a seminar,” Mitchell says. “Chill.”</p><p>Harry laughs. “Sorry, sorry. Chilling.” </p><p>He can’t help that he gets so excited over his research. This is the first time Apex, the Department Head, has ever assigned him anything that personally affects him. How did his mother’s love save him—that’s the current question, and one that Harry hopes he can answer with the help of a family of Wolpertingers. Even though everyone else in Love laughs at his adorable ‘pet bunbuns’ whenever they get a chance.</p><p>“How about your bonding research?” Harry asks.</p><p>Mitchell grimaces. “We’re having a bit of trouble getting the spell to stick, and if we can’t get it to stick, we can’t replicate the results, and if we can’t replicate the results, then we can’t help people who—”</p><p>“Not a seminar,” Harry says.</p><p>Fields laughs. “See if you can make anything of this, Potter. Mitchell, give me the golems, I’m going to show him the spell underpinnings.”</p><p>Mitchell pulls two dolls from his robes and sets them on the floor by the door. Fields aims his wand and all three Unspeakables step back from the golems. He casts one spell and the area glows white for a moment. A wave of magic follows a microsecond later, resettling around their bodies like a Demiguise. Fields’ protective spells have a smell of fir and Harry’s stomach does a little twist, thinking of Malta and Draco and Christmas. Just a few more weeks.</p><p>“See this spell should’ve made the golems fall in love,” Fields says. He casts a diagnostic on the dolls and they pulse an empty grey. “But nothing. No emotional reading from them at all, even though we already implemented the standard animation spells and checked that they were working properly.”</p><p>“The problem we’re having,” Mitchell comments, “is that it takes entirely too much effort to set the spell, and yet everyone who’s ever been affected by it says it happened lickety-split.”</p><p>“Harry, save me from this stupid arse—” says Hermione.</p><p>“Potter, tell your stupid friend—”</p><p>They burst through the door at the same time, and the threshold to Harry’s office flares golden. </p><p>“The fuck was that?” says Draco, once it fades. He’s looking over his robes and hands for any sign of spell-damage, but finds none.</p><p>“Protection spell?” Hermione asks Harry, which is a fine assumption and one Harry dearly wishes he could confirm. But all he can do is stare at Mitchell and Fields, who are both staring at Draco and Hermione with open mouths.</p><p>“You two feeling alright?” asks Fields.</p><p>“Fine,” says Hermione. “Why?”</p><p>“Nothing unusual?” Mitchell presses. </p><p>“No,” says Draco. Both Mitchell and Fields look vaguely disappointed, which illustrates the moralities of an Unspeakable pretty well, in Harry’s opinion. Harry breathes again. Christ, this job is going to kill him one day, and he wouldn’t even be able to attack back without bursting into tears.</p><p>“Okay then,” Mitchell says, shrugging. “Well we’re going to lunch then. Ta, Potter, Granger-Weasley, Malfoy.”</p><p>Fields cancels the spell on the threshold and they leave. Once they’re gone, Draco stomps all the way into Harry’s office and takes the stool nearest the fireplace. It’s the first of December and Level Nine does not maintain relatively even temperature year round like subterranean places are said to. “Potter, you have to make her stop,” he says.</p><p>“Me!” says Hermione, finally turning to him. “You’re the one who—” she breaks off abruptly. </p><p>The sudden quiet draws Draco’s attention to her. He turns, and their eyes meet and Harry can see it all happening in slow motion, as if he’s watched this scene before and has just rewound it in order to take in the details he missed the first time. Hermione’s pupils dilate, Draco’s fingers clench, his chest rises and hers follows, they flick their glances to one another’s mouths and then away again. Their eyes meet again, as if compelled, as if unable to help themselves.</p><p>“Love spell,” Hermione whispers, and Harry is sure he can hear the shattering of his heart.</p><p>He swallows. “No,” he says. It’s not a love spell. It’s so, so, so much worse than anything you’d find at George’s shop.</p><p>Draco swallows and Hermione’s gaze follows the movement. “Bonding spell,” he says. His voice cracks on the words.</p><p>“Yeah,” Harry agrees.</p><p>Hermione goes ashen. “I’m married,” she says. “I can’t be love-bonded to another man. I have a <i>child</i>.” They’re trying for another, in fact. Ron wants a boy. </p><p>“I’m gay,” Draco says, as if this trumps all. He still can’t stop looking at Hermione’s face, though. </p><p>They turn to him at once, as if they’re synced now. Hermione’s eyes are manic. “Harry, Ron can’t find out about this today. Any other time, fine, but he’s <i>thinking</i> today. We have to fix this before he finds out,” she says.</p><p>Draco looks at him strangely, as if he sees him, and remembers where they were just this morning, and what they did just last night, but the details have become hazy. He’s confused. His gaze moves from Harry to Hermione, and his mouth curves up a little bit at the edges as he reaches over to brush a lock of her hair from her neck. Hermione freezes and so does Draco. He snatches his hand back. “Oh, fuck.”</p><p>Harry’s guts twist like dud Christmas crackers that just keep pulling and pulling with no resolution.</p><p>“Help us,” Draco says desperately. “I can’t be bonded to someone. I can’t be forced into <i>loving</i> someone I don’t even really like. She’s <i>messy!</i>”</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>eleutheromania</b>: (n)  an intense and irresistible desire for freedom]<br/>
[<b>fear of engulfment</b>: (n) the fear of being dominated, of losing oneself]</p>
</blockquote>“It’s permanent,” Harry says. The words don’t come out audibly the first time, so he has to swallow and say it again. He can see it in the strings of magic over the door. He can feel the tension of spell-locks and ritual origination. He knows it in the way someone who has dedicated the last seven years of their life to the study of Love’s bonds, both organic and inorganic, knows, deep in their own churning gut. “It’s permanent.”<p>“Oh, bollocks,” says Hermione. She doesn’t cry. She never does.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>fear of engulfment</b>: (n) the fear of being dominated, of losing oneself]</p>
</blockquote>She’s got that one, too.
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. fear of engulfment</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ron does find out. Hermione ends up telling him, fortunately not in her standard, direct way, but nearly as badly. </p><p>“She said, ‘Babe, there’s something I need to tell you,’” Ron says at the Leaky that evening. His eyes are red and rimmed in dark shadows from staying awake thirty-six hours thinking about the case, but he looks okay, all things considered. He takes a long drag off his beer, and says, in a high pitched voice that sounds nothing at all like Hermione, “‘There’s been an accident at work and I’m in love with another man now.’ I thought she was joking, right? So I said, ‘Babe, just tell me it’s not Malfoy,’ and then she started to cry and honestly, Harry, I’m really glad that I was already still half into this episode with the case, because if I hadn’t been distracted thinking about it, I’d for sure be up a week thinking about this one. Fortunately, I’m still too concerned about who offed Fudge to be a fucking mess. Yet.”</p><p>Harry stares down into his glass. It’s not empty yet. He’s been nursing the same beer for an hour and a half, can’t even dredge up the motivation to finish it. Outside the Leaky, Muggle London’s got this big, happy-looking, lit-up angel strung up over Charing Cross Road. Ugly, white LED light glares through the window and feels as harsh on Harry’s eyes as watching Ron hold his shit together. “What are you going to do about it?” he asks.</p><p>Ron shrugs, sighs. “Don’t suppose there’s much of anything I <i>can</i> do about it.” He rubs his hand over his face and sighs again. “God, Harry, what am I going to do if you lot can’t break that spell? She’s the love of my life. I get it, it’s not real; she can’t help it...but it hurts, mate. I’m terrified that it’ll really be permanent, and then she’ll run off with Malfoy, who’s gay by the way, and take Rosie and, I just...have you got any idea what this feels like? To have the only person you’ve ever loved trapped in a bond with someone else?”</p><p>It takes Harry too long to answer. Ron looks over at him, brows furrowed. “No,” Harry says finally. “No idea.” </p><p>Ron’s his best friend, but even he can’t know about their relationship. No one can. Not when Apex… And anyway, it doesn’t matter now because there <i>is no</i> relationship. </p><p>“Sorry mate,” Ron says, as if he has anything to apologise for. “I wish it’d worked out with Charlie.”</p><p>Harry shrugs. They both have demanding careers that neither of them wanted to leave. The long distance thing couldn’t last forever. </p><p>“They’re working on it,” he says, which is such a stupid thing to say but really, what else has can he say? They’re in over their fucking heads, even Mitchell who’s about as old as McGonagall, though half as respectable. He’s smart though. Real smart. And if he can’t figure this thing out—if he and Draco and Hermione and Fields together can’t figure this out—then…</p><p>Then fuck.</p><p>He’s not going to cry here. He’s not.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>fear of engulfment</b>: (n) the fear of being dominated, of losing oneself]</p>
</blockquote>Turns out, they’ve all got it.<p>“Can’t you help, too?” says Ron and when he looks at Harry, Harry sees that the mania’s still there. His eyes are sybil-blue and maybe he does have some seer in him. He was always grand at making up homework for Divinations, and didn’t he just predict who Hermione had gotten herself bonded to?</p><p>The thing about Ron’s predictions, though, is that he’s got no idea he’s making them. He thinks it’s all a great laugh until three months later when it turns out you really were chased by a Grim in third year… or betrayed by your own friend, who happened to be him…or his wife gets bonded to someone he still—non-ironically—refers to as twatface. </p><p>It’s all just a big clusterfuck and Harry hates it.</p><p>“I’m trying,” he says, knowing it’s not nearly enough. “Fuck if I know what to do though. I don’t work with manufactured love. That’s Mitchell’s spec.”</p><p>Ron snorts, but it sounds sad anyway. “Yeah, manufactured. Might not be organic but it doesn’t stop my wife from drawing <i>Mrs. Hermione Malfoy</i> in a fucking heart on her work notes.”</p><p>Harry cringes. God, is the bond really that strong? Even Gilderoy Lockhart hadn’t made Hermione do that… but it doesn’t matter, really. What matters is that Ron’s wife is in love with Harry’s boyfriend, and Harry should’ve told Draco he loved him first.</p><p>But he didn’t. A thousand regrets crash in like a tide that never leaves, and Harry is left drowning in his silence, choking on his own cowardice, stuck awkwardly patting his best bro’s back while Ron struggles with two manias at once, and Harry can’t even finish his goddamn beer.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. fear of mania</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Apex considers firing Draco and Hermione. No workplace romances, even non-consensual fake ones. There is no law higher than this in the Department.</p><p>“Please,” Harry says quietly, once the rest of the team working on this incident has left the room. “The job is <i>everything</i> to Dr—Unspeakable Malfoy. And to Hermione, too. Plus, we need them for this. Can you let it slide just this once? Maybe it’ll be temporary.”</p><p>Apex looks up at Harry over her reading glasses. She’s not happy. None of them are. Probably doesn’t help it’s <i>her son</i> trapped in a forced love bond with a <i>Muggleborn</i>, either—even if the Muggleborn in question is one of her favourites.</p><p>“I know it is,” says Narcissa Malfoy, the spells on her cowl relaxed enough today that he sees her face clearly. “But it is even more important in a case such as this, where we need everyone at peak performance in order to unravel this mystery. We can’t gamble on Unspeakable Malfoy and Unspeakable Granger’s futures—or this department’s single pursuit—because they were too besotted with one another to focus on the work. It is dangerous for them and dangerous for our mission.”</p><p>“Split them up—” says Harry. </p><p>“And <i>you</i> are too close to Unspeakable Granger to focus,” Apex adds. </p><p>Harry’s chest seizes, frozen between breaths. “I’ll work with Malfoy instead.”</p><p>Narcissa’s eyes are not like her husband’s. They’re not like Draco’s. They are instead the eerie ghost-grey of the Blacks—that uncomfortable, abyss-like, cataract-colour of those close to death, and those fresh from being born. Harry has never been able to read her, not like he can Draco. But maybe no one has. Maybe that’s how she remained in her position all through the War, without either side suspecting her anything more than a society wife. Maybe that’s how she survived at all. </p><p>He can’t read her now, but he feels the crawl of her gaze over his face like ants, like the fingers of a Demiguise, blind and feeling. She doesn’t tilt her head or lift her brows; doesn’t express anything at all, but Harry knows.</p><p>He knows she sees him. </p><p>He knows she <i>knows</i>.</p><p>He swallows. Because he is not yet strong enough to be an Apex Unspeakable. He does not yet have that much control over his own body or emotions. He might never. </p><p>But she knows. </p><p>“You will work with Unspeakable Malfoy on the nature of the love inflicted by the bond,” Apex decides. “We may open some avenues of pursuit with that information alone. Unspeakable Weasley will partner with Unspeakables Mitchell and Fields to unravel the bond triggers. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and a simple time-travel to deactivate the trigger will work; it’s nearly Christmas after all. I suppose I’m due some holiday spirit.”</p><p>“Right,” Harry says, forcing a smile. He and Draco were supposed to spend Christmas together. Harry's already booked the Airbnb in Malta and planned to finally stop being chickenshit. He’d imagined sending Ron and Hermione a photo of them on the beach, surprising everyone with their no-longer secret relationship. He’d thought maybe by then he’d come up with a plan for him and Draco to be together, to not lose their jobs over it. Or if it came to it, to give up his own, because when he thinks about it—especially now, especially <i>knowing</i>—he knows Draco is worth thirty of his jobs. Draco is worth a hundred. He is worth changing everything for. He <i>was</i> worth it.</p><p>He’ll have to cancel that Airbnb. Pay the cancellation fee, whatever. Better than spending a Christmas alone in Malta, thinking about all the ways he’s fucked himself over during his life. Who’s going to want a card from just Harry, a sad picture with ‘Happy Christmas’ written in the sand and no cheerful-couple smiles to go with it? Malta’s definitely out. “We’ll get started right away.”</p><p>Apex grants him a fraction of a smile. Her hair, white now, not with age but with all the accumulated shocks of the War and the horrors that came still after, slides over her shoulder as she leans forward, her ghost eyes locked on him. “Do not lose focus, Unspeakable Potter.”</p><p>Harry backs out of the room, shutting the door behind him. </p><p>His magic crackles around him. <i>Reign it in, Potter</i>. But he can’t and he doesn’t want to, anyway.</p><p>So Harry goes home and shoots a protracted series of <i>Incendios</i> at his fireplace, his curtains, his floors and walls, letting the curse on his magic force him into angry, frustrated, miserable tears with each spell, because otherwise he wouldn’t allow himself the luxury. Kreacher comes in time to douse the parlour before Grimmauld burns to the ground. </p><p>Then he makes Harry tea, which is almost worse. The house is cold and dark and smells like burnt wood and wool, but Kreacher doesn’t say a word.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. knowledge of loss</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Love is a dependency,” Draco says. “It’s a weakness. A vulnerability. We’re all guilty of it.”</p><p>Hermione scoffs. “You <i>would</i> think that,” she says, her entire body stiff with the tension of <i>not looking at him</i>. Harry watches them, his own tension gone, unravelled like all the threads of fate that kept him alive until he was eighteen. It was supposed to just be him and Draco working together, but Hermione is a slave to the prospect of a study group and Draco is in no position to say no to her. Nor does he appear to want to.</p><p>Harry’s reached a steady place—a level sort of misery that gives him the gift of clear vision, of a detached sort of intellectual curiosity. He’s both outside his body watching, and inside feeling every sharp cut. As an Unspeakable, he’s interested. Had his mother felt anything like this as she made the decision to stay, to put her body before Harry’s?</p><p>Is there a magic to be harnessed in the knowledge of loss? It would be sort of poetic if his emotional magic was healed by even worse emotions. And magic is often poetic, Harry’s found. Or at least petty.</p><p>Draco is having a much easier time pretending this isn’t affecting him, pretending he’s not upset over the loss of his relationship with Harry. But he’s probably not pretending. Harry knows enough of soul bonds to understand that any love or affection Draco had felt for Harry has been transferred to Hermione now. The nature of this bond is one of repair—to repair a marriage too far gone to fix, to repair the lives of two unhappy people with no other options. It siphons love from anywhere to feed the bond.</p><p>And Harry sees Draco’s soft eyes as he watches Hermione, sees the hidden smile on his face as he looks down at his notes, and Harry wonders. He hopes. In a sick, lost sort of way, Harry thinks there’s got to be something redeemable in the fact that if Draco is showing this much affection for Hermione now, then surely at least some of that was transferred from Harry. </p><p>A few days ago, Harry had been <i>sure</i> Draco loved him.</p><p>He isn’t sure of anything anymore. </p><p>Well, he’s sure that Draco really isn’t feeling very sad about the loss of Harry because he literally <i>can’t</i> feel it. Which deeply sucks.</p><p>Hermione is making an effort to make sure Ron feels included, to make sure he knows she’s still <i>her</i> under there, even if her emotions aren’t. It’s forced and awkward and make’s Harry feel like he’s watching his best friend get friend-zoned by his own wife, but at least she’s trying. At least she <i>can</i> try, in front of them. But Harry and Draco hadn’t told anyone. Couldn’t have told anyone.</p><p>“I think time travel’s out, unfortch,” says Fields, gnawing on the inked end of his quill. He and Mitchell keep giving Draco and Hermione curious, delighted stares, like their a pair of Wolpertingers and not colleagues. “We been studying this one for months now—it’s a love that transcends time and space, y’know? If we pop back to last week, it’ll just pop back with us, pushing the origination point to wherever we go.”</p><p>Draco groans and leans back in his chair, alternately glaring and smiling at the small Christmas tree Hermione’d put on his desk this morning. It’s rainbow coloured, for Pride, because logical Hermione knows Draco’s gay as fuck, but soul-bonded Hermione still wants to show her love for him. </p><p>Harry hates it, of course.</p><p>Draco hates anything on his desk that isn’t a blotter or inkwell, but he’s also in love with Hermione, thus the confused reactions.</p><p>Watching the two of them <i>is</i> a bit like watching his Wolpertingers, Harry supposes. “Where does that leave us, then?” he asks.</p><p>Everyone frowns. From across her desk, Harry notices a corner of small hearts drawn on her notes. He has never wanted to punch Hermione so much in his entire life, and yet here they are. Kreacher won’t be happy, but he’s going to have to do a few more offensive spells tonight.</p><p>“Do you think it has anything to do with mania?” Hermione asks after a moment.</p><p>Draco looks up. His eyes are bluer than Narcissa’s, even with that undercurrent of gray. They practically <i>shine</i> for Hermione and Harry wants to punch him, too. Instead, he makes a note: <i>No time travel. Will just make worse.</i></p><p>“You are so fucking clever,” Draco finally says, leaning forward to catch her eye. “It <i>feels</i> like a mania, doesn't it? I could <i>kiss</i> you!”</p><p>Hermione goes red. Harry snaps his quill, pointedly ignoring Mitchell’s curious glance. Fuck <i>Incendios</i>. It’s a night for scotch and <i>Expulsos</i>. Kreacher will just have to deal with it.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. fear of seeing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Master would like another scotch?” says Kreacher, voice remarkably even all things considered. </p><p>Harry rolls his neck to look up at Kreacher. He’s relatively comfortable here, in the wreckage of his own home. The couch will be a loss, but house elves are a dab hand at structural magic, so the second storey should be salvageable. </p><p>Harry’s eyes feel scratched dry, his lids obnoxiously puffed so that even his glasses aren’t helping with the blurring. The windows all have hairline fractures, like ice freezing in patterns, mini snowflakes of glass. “Yep.”</p><p>Kreacher eyes him for a moment, then disappears. </p><p>Harry can still see Draco’s face in front of him. The hallucinations linger now. In the early days of the curse, they were just flashes—so quick and gone that Harry’d wondered if he was losing his mind before they found the curse. He still doesn’t know who cast it, who sneaked past his defenses so cleverly, so quietly, so effectively. He can’t even pinpoint the exact day it hit him—that is the genius of this curse. After all, even Harry at the top of his Auror work didn’t need to use offensive spells and curses each day at work. There were weekends when all he did was light the kettle, and a quick flash of Mrs Weasley’s face as he <i>Incendio’d</i> the burner wouldn’t have seemed out of the ordinary when one was cooking.</p><p>It’s stronger now, of course. In a way, destroying his own house is the only way he’ll see Draco’s face right now. The only way he’ll get Draco to smile at him again. It almost doesn’t even matter that he sees himself <i>Expulso</i>-ing Draco at the same time. Harry’s lived with the curse long enough to separate the spell fiction from reality, it’s just that now, even this is better than reality. Now, he doesn’t even mind the way the curse wrenches every slicing emotion from his gut like a fishhook and dangles it before him to watch, to observe, to <i>be observed by</i>.</p><p>There are worse things than curses that make you <i>feel</i> when you attack. </p><p>There is, of course, not having anything <i>left</i> to feel. Which is precisely what Harry feels when the ostentatious gong of his Floo alarm rings through the house, disturbing the strange, completed silence that had overtaken since he’d worn himself out with spellwork.</p><p>Kreacher returns with the scotch, but upon finding Harry still reclined back against the ruins of his settee, seems to reconsider.</p><p>“Kreacher will set this here,” he says, putting the scotch as far away from his master as servantly-possible. The crystal clinks against the silver tray atop the sideboard. “Would Master like for Kreacher to answer the Floo or is Master not—equal to receiving visitors at this time?”</p><p>Harry sighs. There are water marks on his ceiling. He’s never really noticed them before, but now he thinks about it, Kreacher had asked him to have the upstairs plumbing fixed last month and he’d not done it. If there is one thing he’s learned, it’s that Kreacher is always right and when Kreacher refuses to offer an opinion at all, it’s dire indeed. He heaves himself up, first on his elbows, and then to sitting. His head feels a bit like a scrubbed cauldron, but it’s fine. He’s fine. </p><p>“Answer it, please.”</p><p>Kreacher gives him one last, narrow look before popping away. </p><p>“Right,” Harry says into the resulting emptiness. “Right.” Time to pull his shit together. He’s an adult. He’s been through worse. He feels… remotely… human again. Or at least devoid of the dagger-sharp edges of misery. He can do this.</p><p>
  <i>Why didn’t you tell him?</i>
</p><p>He should’ve. If Draco had known, maybe he would’ve been able to shake off the bond. But no… if that were possible, Hermione would’ve done it through sheer-bloody-mindedness already.</p><p>Harry scowls and rubs at his eyelids as yet another miserable hallucination of Draco materializes. The curse is lasting longer these days. </p><p>“Potter.”</p><p>Harry stops short. “Oh.”</p><p>Draco regards him as one might a Potions experiment that’s gone unexpectedly sentient. Strange, interesting, and possibly worth a Paracelsus Prize.<br/>
“Malfoy. Hi.”</p><p>Harry stoically refuses to look at or acknowledge the state of his formal living room. Draco—well-bred—follows suit.</p><p>“My mother tells me she’s decided we won’t be sacked. And that you are to thank for it.”</p><p>“Er.” Internally, Harry wonders how he <i>ever</i> managed to keep his cool around Draco. It’s not like he’s Mister Suave or anything. He’s just… relatively happy with himself on most days, and brave or stupid enough to put himself out, lay himself bare, for a chance at something he wants. <i>So tell me,</i> Harry wonders to himself, <i>why you never fucking told him you loved him when you had the chance, you fucking moron?</i> “Yes, I spoke with her after the departmental yesterday.”</p><p>“Right, well. Thank you.”</p><p>They stand there for a moment, regarding one another. It’s odd. Detached-Harry floats out of his body a bit and watches from a remove. He sees himself stare at Draco. He sees Draco stare at him. He sees a pull, but it’s not bi-directional. It is, in fact, a pathetic thing… a deep and visceral longing from Harry’s own aura, and that Potion-Master gaze from Draco. </p><p>“Draco,” Harry says on a swallow, when the pause becomes too long. “Is there anyth—”</p><p>“No,” says Draco. And, to his credit, he does look regretful. “I remember it. I remember us <i>happening</i>, of course. But I don’t remember—feeling it.”</p><p>“Oh,” says Harry. He runs a hand through his hair, distinctly disadvantaged here. He makes an abortive attempt to sit down before remembering the state of his couch. Draco looks at him, that passive stare, cruel in its apathy. “Well, why are you here?”</p><p>Draco lifts one eyebrow. He’s nothing like Narcissa. Draco couldn’t hide his emotions if he tried. Which is why seeing absolutely nothing on him now feels like having each finger pulled off one by one. “You told Apex you’d work with me to solve this thing. So I can… avoid Hermione. Weasley.”</p><p>
  <i>Hermione.</i>
</p><p>“Yeah,” Harry says. He had said that. What a fucking idiot he is. “Well, I don’t know where to start.”</p><p>“Fortunately, I do,” Draco says, advancing into the room. He—finally—takes an obvious glance around, his lips pursing. “Honestly, Potter, the state of you. One could be forgiven for thinking you’d just watched someone die.”</p><p>Harry’s smile freezes on his face. He hadn’t. He’d watched someone live. Over and over. A hallucination that never ends, even when his spell hits. </p><p>“Well, sit down then. I’ll fix a chair for you.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. knowledge of reality</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Draco’s cut his hair. The sides are trimmed close and the top is still longer, but brushed artfully to the side. </p><p>“I didn’t tell him to, I swear,” says Hermione, nursing a cup of long-cold tea. She hasn’t even bothered to cast a warming charm on it, and that’s how Harry knows she’s truly upset. “We were making lists of things we remembered liking about our previous partners—”</p><p>“Previous partners?” Harry interrupts, heart hammering. “Who—?”</p><p>Hermione waves a hand, annoyance—and jealousy—clear on her face. “He wouldn’t tell me. I swear, you’d think at this point I <i>deserve</i> to know! It could be relevant to removing the bond!” She sighs. “Anyway, I remembered that I always liked when Ron got a new haircut, so I put that on the list. Then, this morning he comes to work looking like—<i>that</i>.”</p><p><i>That</i>, indeed. Harry had always liked Draco’s hair at his shoulders. It had looked so loose and carefree, so like the Draco only Harry knew. Had Draco kept it that way for Harry or because <i>Draco</i> likes it that way? He wonders, in that moment, if Draco even knows what he likes, or if he’s always lived his life for other people, and if that’s the case, Harry never wants to see his hair long again. </p><p>“Maybe he just wanted a change,” Harry offers.</p><p>Hermione finally looks up at him. Her eyes are smeared with purple. “When does Draco Malfoy ever <i>want a change</i>, Harry? He can’t even leave the office until he’s fully cleaned his quill and wiped the rim of his inkwell!”</p><p>“He is a bit tidy,” Harry admits. But it’s only at the office. At home… <i>with Harry</i>... he’s not. He <i>wasn’t</i>.</p><p>“What did—what was on his list?” Harry can’t help but ask.</p><p>Hermione knocks back the rest of her cold tea like it’s a shot. “Dark hair,” she says dully, pulling at her own which is, at best, ‘medium brown’. “Fit.” She has that, at least. “Clever.” She smiles, then forcefully pushes it down. “I don’t know. His likes were fairly generic. He mentioned, er, penises. Well, he said ‘cocks’, but, you know. He likes those, of course.”</p><p>“Of course,” Harry says, biting back his own smile for the first time in days. </p><p>“Oh!” Hermione adds, straightening. “Risk-taking. It’s a turn-on apparently.” She sniggers. “I don’t know if this will help us fix this stupid thing, but it’s my only working theory at present. Fields and I did the calculations and time-travel’s definitely out, but we think we did untangle the trigger—” She pauses, coming back to herself to meet his eyes. “It was a bond to save a failing marriage, you know. To help people with nothing to anchor them together, and nothing left without one another. A true last resort—when the only thing worse than being together would be being alone. To give them something in one another to love.”</p><p>Harry swallows. “So what was the trigger?”</p><p>“Dislike,” she says, her voice quite small indeed. “Perhaps something… even stronger. But there had to be a certain camaraderie there, too. A certain… I don’t know, Harry. It’s so hard to explain. In essence, we had to both hate and like each other. Which feels… very awful. I didn’t realize I still disliked Malfoy after working with him all these years. Not really. I thought he just <i>annoyed</i> me. And I… well, I didn’t realize he disliked me so much, either.”</p><p>She looks up, her eyes shining. She looks afraid to blink and Harry doesn’t blame her. “Am I really that messy?”</p><p>Harry snorts, but his laughter is muted again by the undercurrent of misery they’re all being subjected to. To <i>know</i> you’ve been bonded to someone you don’t even like. To <i>know</i> they don’t like you in return, but you’re both forced into loving each other nonetheless. Is it worse? He really doesn’t know. Draco is an ice sculpture to him now—a memory of a dragon, someone Harry’d used to know, who now exists only in photographs in his mind. There is nothing alive between them anymore. </p><p>Hate is not the opposite of love. Apathy is.</p><p>“I don’t mind your messiness,” Harry says, but it’s the wrong answer. </p><p>Hermione’s lip trembles, and with a great effort, she pulls herself back from crying. “I want to be loved,” she whispers. She clenches her eyes shut and tears finally fall. “But… not by him. I want him to love me and I <i>don’t</i> want him to love me, and I want to love <i>Ron<i> again but I don’t know <i>how</i>. Harry, I’m so unhappy. How is a bond that’s supposed to make everyone happy making us so miserable? I don’t know what to do! And with Rosie, and Christmas coming, I just—how am I supposed to pretend to be in love with Ron all day at the Burrow when I can’t even remember what kissing him felt like?”</i></i></p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“I don’t know,” Harry says, swallowing. His throat feels a bit thick, but it’s flu season, so he’s probably just sick. “You don’t remember feeling anything for him?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>She shakes her head. Her face has gone all red and blotchy and Harry hates it. He hasn’t seen her cry since school. She throws up a silencing spell around their cafeteria table. “Nothing. It’s like I’m remembering a film of someone else’s life. I see it in my head. I <i>remember</i> dating him. I <i>remember</i> kissing him or… or <i>fucking</i> him,” she says, eyes flashing stubbornly. “But there’s nothing there, nothing attached to it. I remember him taking me to St Mungo’s when Rosie was coming. I remember him handing her to me and I feel so much <i>love</i> in that moment, but only for Rosie. Every other moment with Ron is just blank. It’s empty. Even… even before we were dating, when we were friends. I’ve gone as far back as first year and all the memories I have of him are just completely void of emotion. And then I think of Draco, and I have these, these—<i>memories</i> of emotion that <i>isn’t real</i>. It’s like we’ve been together forever and I’ve loved him forever, and if I think back to school, Draco’s there. I have these vague, almost-there memories of happiness when I think of him in sixth year. <i>Sixth year,</i> Harry! My mind has been violated, and I can’t do anything about it. I’m powerless and unsafe in my own head, and <i>I want to want Ron</i>.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“Oh my god,” Harry whispers because he hates this. It’s not even for himself anymore, though his own misery is indeed thick and self-indulgent and all-encompassing. But—to hear Hermione talk about her own mind like this, it’s all so <i>wrong</i>. “How are you and Ron… handling it?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>She shrugs. “He’s my roommate. He forgot and walked in on me in the shower yesterday and I felt nothing. No indignation, no frustration, no… arousal.” She puts her head in her hands, her fingers tangling in her hair. Her voice comes muffled when she says, “<i>Everything</i> he was to me was stolen. To feed this fucking bond. I swear I’m losing my mind. I can’t trust anything I think.”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>“We’ll fix it,” Harry says, but his voice is weak and he can’t bring himself to strengthen it.</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>She laughs, humourless. “Will we?”</i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>But the truth is, Harry has no idea. </i>
  </i>
</p><p>
  <i>
    <i>What if he had been more of a <i>risk-taker</i>? Would that have changed anything? Or what if he… Or—</i>
  </i>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. atychiphobia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A few days late, sorry! </p><p>Just a friendly reminder that this is a true WIP and while I know what the ending is, I don't know all the avenues we'll be taking to get there.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I found something.”</p><p>Both Draco and Hermione look up when he enters, their movements synced like an old married couple. Harry ignores the pull of anger in his stomach. It isn’t their fault. Isn’t his either. When Draco merely lifts one eyebrow in response, the anger is harder to ignore.</p><p><i>Fuck you</i>, he thinks, uncharitably. <i>Fuck you for not remembering me. For not having the basic human decency to at least acknowledge that you</i> did <i>feel something for me, before. That I still feel it, even if you don’t. Just… fuck you, Draco.</i></p><p>“You did?” Hermione half-rises from her desk. </p><p>Hermione and Draco have erected an impenetrable shield between their desks, presumably to keep themselves from fucking each other during the day. It shimmers like heat in the air, a solid, thick wall of clear magic that doesn’t do anything to hide them from their own looks of desire.</p><p>“Yep,” says Harry, pleasant. He comes further in, not sure which side of the barrier he should choose, and in the end, goes for Hermione’s. It feels safer. Less hostile. He lays the book open on her desk, the pages already opened to the one he has in mind. Draco stands from his desk and approaches the shield, but doesn’t bother coming around. </p><p>“Apex asked me to look into the nature of the love your bond’s founded upon. Knowing that it was triggered by your—dislike—I was able to cross-reference the unsolved cases we have over in Love. There’s another bond like this. It was used in the twelfth century when villages were falling apart because everyone was dying of Plague, but they needed everyone to pull together.”</p><p>“Doesn’t sound very relevant,” Draco mutters. “Is there a point?”</p><p>Harry’s fingers clench on the fragile pages, but no one notices. He doesn’t look up. Carefully, he says, “I’m getting to the point. The background is for Hermione, who no doubt cares.”</p><p>She gives him a nod, but then, apparently can’t help herself from also giving Draco a placating, loving look. “Yes, go on, Harry.”</p><p>“The bond pulls emotion from—unnecessary sources.” He can’t help swallowing heavily around that last bit. It sticks in his throat, choking him. His brain, consistently unhelpful, flashes back to the last night he had with Draco, and how <i>Draco</i> had been stuck in his throat, and it’s so strange how two things can have the exact same physical sensation and he would die to feel the first again while the second is making him feel like he’s dying. “The emotion it takes from the unnecessary sources, it shunts to the bond-tie. The goal was to make the villagers care enough about one another that they’d take precautions not to kill one another.”</p><p>Draco and Hermione share a look that Harry hates.</p><p>Hermione is the one to speak. “So the love here is one of survival. Not romance.”</p><p>“I think so, yeah.” Harry focuses only on her. Whenever he looks at Draco, he just—wants him. He wants him and he loves him and his hands feel empty without touching him. </p><p>If he closes his eyes, he could remember the pads of Draco’s fingers running down his spine. He could feel the chill of Draco’s perpetually cold feet running up his shins. He remembers Draco’s body like his own and being in this office feels like being in another dimension. Everything is wrong. Everything.</p><p>Draco returns to his desk. “This… kind of makes sense—”</p><p>“In the way magic ever makes sense,” Hermione adds darkly. “All endless illogic and—”</p><p>“Poetic metaphor,” Draco finishes. “Yes, dear, we know.” </p><p>They both blush. Harry resolutely continues his polite smile. </p><p>“So,” says Draco, clearing his throat. “If these bonds are related, and the nature of the love in the bond is one of community survival, then that adds new context to the failing-marriage-bond we thought it was. It’s not just about saving two people from a life of misery. It’s about saving a community from death.”</p><p>“But that death could come from a failing marriage,” Hermione adds. “Domestic violence is real even in the magical world.”</p><p>Draco’s face takes on a dark expression, but he doesn’t say what he’s thinking. Harry doesn’t have to ask. He’s already heard the sad and stomach-turning story of Granny Black. The whole damned family was doomed; Sirius never had a chance. </p><p>“Right,” Harry says. “So if the bond can save one marriage or a whole community, then—theoretically—it can involve more than the two of you.”</p><p>Draco turns to him sharply, Hermione more considered. “Why would we want to drag more people into this nightmare?”</p><p>She gives him a sharp look but doesn’t disagree. </p><p>Harry shrugs. In truth, he’s only half-thought this through. He’s reckless and risk-taking, isn’t he? With both his body and his heart. And, he reckons, his fucking sanity, too.</p><p>“My theory is that the—love—could be… redistributed. Towards people you actually want to be in love with.”</p><p>Hermione sits down heavily. “I could love Ron again?”</p><p>Hesitantly, Harry nods. “Maybe. I don’t know but it’s a possibility. I’ll need to examine you and the bond to double-check.” </p><p>“Yes, when?” says Draco.</p><p>“Do you want to come over tonight? We can all have dinner.” Hermione adds. </p><p>Harry hesitates for only a moment. “Yeah, sure. I need to talk to Ron anyway.”</p><p>“Oh god, Harry, I hope you’re right,” Hermione adds.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p><b>atychiphobia</b>: (n) fear of failure</p>
</blockquote>“Yeah. Me, too.”
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. knowledge of future</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Fudge case is solved and Ron has the time to fully submerged himself in a new episode, focused, uncomfortably, on winning his wife back through sheer force of will.</p><p>“I made dinner,” he says, grinning, as Harry steps out of the floo. “You like Massaman curry, right? It’s Hermione’s favourite.”</p><p>“I know,” Harry says. It’s been her favourite since childhood. She always says no one makes it as good as Ron does. Ron just grins at him, turning back to check the pot on the cooker. He begins to whistle, and Harry feels like a voyeur to a cringey, pathetic show he would really rather not see. </p><p>It hits too close to home, and it makes him pathetic, too, to witness it. Is this what he looks like? Do others see him in this pathetic, lonely way yet not know the cause of it? </p><p>At dinner, it becomes clear. </p><p>“My goal is to spend as much time with Ron as possible,” Hermione says. She takes a sip of her wine—controlled, purposeful—and adds, “In fact, Ron and I are taking a holiday.”</p><p>“A… holiday,” Harry repeats. Rosie’s already abed so it’s just the three of them, sitting her so close together and yet having never been further apart. He looks between the two of them. Ron’s grin is manic, and it hurts to see it. Hermione’s determined, and that hurts even more. “Where to?” he asks. And then, because he can’t help himself, “Shouldn’t you like… be around to help?”</p><p>Instantly he regrets it, but there’s a lot Harry regrets right now, and to regret one more is hardly an anchor.</p><p>Hermione’s smile stays firm. “Yes, I thought perhaps devoted time with Ron could help to strengthen our bond while the distance from… Draco… would weaken that one.”</p><p>“I suppose it can’t hurt,” Harry says. </p><p>“That’s what I said!” Ron adds, taking another, happy bite of curry. It is really good. Mrs Weasley certainly hadn’t given her kitchen skills to Gin, so it had to go somewhere. “We’re going to Italy. Mum’s keeping Rosie. We’ll be back for Christmas.”</p><p>Harry swallows. “So—it’s just me and… and Malfoy working on this.”</p><p>“Mitchell and Fields will be here, too,” Hermione adds. “And their research is quite compelling, actually. I’ve read through their initial work on the bond and I’m sure something will come to us if we read it a few more times. And then of course, with our bond being founded on our… dislike… of one another, the distance may allow it to wane. That brings me to my other thought, Harry—”</p><p>“Don’t kill her,” Ron cuts in. “She’s still the love of my life, Harry.”</p><p>Harry’s skin goes cold, he has an idea of what she’s going to suggest, but she couldn’t possibly—</p><p>“Would you spend some time with Draco?” Hermione continues blithely. “Maybe there could be something there, and if we use that as a lever against the bond, with me and Ron also levering our marriage—well, you’re both into men, and both fit and healthy, good careers… well, Apex wouldn’t like the inter-department romance, but she may come around… and there’s always been something between you, even in school. If you can work with it, maybe it could turn into attraction—”</p><p>“You want to me to force myself to fall in love with Malfoy to break the bond,” Harry surmises, voice quiet.</p><p>“Well—yes,” says Hermione, chewing her lip. “It might help. Shouldn’t we try everything?”</p><p>“And if it doesn’t work, and I’m stuck being in love with Malfoy while he’s in love with you,” Harry prompts.</p><p>Ron looks away. Their eyes meet and in that moment, Harry is sure he and Ron are feeling the exact same thing. </p><p>“If it’s not a bond,” Hermione says softly, “maybe it wouldn’t be as hard to overcome it.” But even she doesn’t believe what she’s saying, by the downcast of her eyes. She drags her fork awkwardly through her curry, not taking a bite. </p><p>Harry takes a long drink of his water before the rage burning inside him quiets enough to speak. “Hermione, I think Ron could tell you that just because it isn’t a magical bond doesn’t mean it’s any easier to fix. I love you, but this is asking—a lot. It’s a lot.”</p><p>His face feels simultaneously cold and hot, like he’s just stepped in from the Sahara into a restaurant cooler. How could Hermione—how could she ever ask—but then he looks away, down at his own plate, untouched and cold since they started talking. He’s asked more from her before, hasn’t he? He’s asked worse.</p><p>It’s just that it doesn’t feel worse. Going to one’s potential death doesn’t <i>feel</i> worse than having to live a life without redamancy. But who is he to judge? He walked willingly.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. knowledge of now</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>But he does do it. Was there ever any doubt? Of course he does it. Because it’s <i>hope</i> and you can’t kill hope, or so he’s told.</p>
<p>Draco opens his door looking gray and unkempt and Harry has never—<i>never</i>—seen Draco look unkempt. He steps back, reflexively, his hands coming up to guard his own stomach, not from Draco, but from the primal fear that he could be sick.</p>
<p>“Are—are you okay?” he asks, staring closely at Draco’s pale face and red eyes. “Are you sick?”</p>
<p>Draco’s mouth twists. He doesn’t step back or open the door wider. “I’m fine, Potter. What do you need?”</p>
<p>“I—” Harry says, swallowing. “Hermione thought it would be a good idea if you two spent time apart, and—with other people you could be attracted to instead.”</p>
<p>“You told—”</p>
<p>“No!” Harry says. “Of course not!” But Draco doesn’t look any happier. Harry doesn’t <i>feel</i> any happier himself, all things being equal. But still he hopes. “She doesn’t know. But since you’re gay, and I’m bi, and we’re both, well, <i>single</i>, if you like, she thought I should try to like you to see if it helped break the bond. She’s going away with Ron to do the same.”</p>
<p>Draco stares at him for a long moment. And then he laughs. A lot. That hysterical, bitter laugh that only Draco can truly pull off without looking like a mad scientist, because bitter and ironic is Draco’s truth. But so is eroticism and depth and fierceness and Harry loves both sides.</p>
<p>Finally Draco pulls the door open, allowing Harry to step through. </p>
<p>“She <i>would</i> do that,” Draco decides, and not without another dose of bitterness. </p>
<p>“People always thought Hermione was a goody two-shoes,” Harry adds, mind numb as he enters, shivering to feel Draco’s body so close to his own, even without touching. “But she’s always been ruthless. It’s saved my arse before. Maybe it’ll save yours now.”</p>
<p>Draco’s eyes follow him as he goes by. “Save me for you, you mean?”</p>
<p>Harry stiffens, pauses. A deep breath and then he continues on into Draco’s living room, a place he knows almost as intimately as Draco’s body. He sets his research and the dinner he’s brought with him on the coffee table. Draco hesitates before following him over, taking a seat in the rarely-used chair instead of the couch, with Harry. </p>
<p>“Why?” Harry finally grits out.</p>
<p>Draco blinks. “Why what?”</p>
<p>“<i>Why</i> do you have to be cruel? I know you didn’t ask for this, but I didn’t either. And you may not feel anything for me anymore, but you <i>remember</i> it. You know it was real, even if—it’s gone now.”</p>
<p>“It <i>is</i> gone,” Draco says, face blank. </p>
<p>Harry sinks back against the couch, running a hand through his hair. “I <i>know</i>. I know… Draco, I—does this bond make you <i>hate</i> me just because you… love Hermione?”</p>
<p>“No,” Draco says after a long, painful moment.</p>
<p>“Then <i>what<i>?” Harry demands. “Why do you have to be such an arsehole to me when just three weeks ago you were panting my name every night? Was it <i>fake</i>?”</i></i></p>
<p>
  “No!” Draco says, slamming his fist on the coffee table. The bag of takeaway shakes from the force. “It wasn’t fake but it doesn’t <i>exist</i> anymore and I don’t see it serving either of our best interests if we try to pretend it does, because <i>this might really be permanent.</i>”
</p>
<p>
  Harry deflates, swallows. It suddenly feels hard to breathe and he doesn’t know if it’s anxiety, sudden-onset asthma, or if it actually is possible to die of a broken heart. He’s read <i>Where the Red Fern Grows</i>. If it can happen to dogs, it can probably happen to wizards. 
</p>
<p>
    “Nothing I’ve uncovered so far gives me any hope at all that this can be reversed,” Draco continues, softer now. “I know Hermione is—” He pauses, swallowing and clenching his fists. “I know Granger is optimistic but this bond is not made to be broken. It creates a… a mania in us. You don’t know what it’s like in my head, in her head, Ha—Potter. You don’t know what it forces us to think, to believe. My reality is not based in truth anymore, yet it’s still reality, and that makes it true. I <i>am</i> in love with Hermione. And I always will be.”
</p>
<p>
    Harry scrubs at his face. He’s not going to cry. He’s lived—and died—through worse than this. “But what if we did anyway?” he finally says, looking up and meeting Draco’s eyes. They’re so clear to him, even now, even at this distance. He can see them in his mind’s eye as close as they’d been when Draco leaned into him, panting his name, their bodies undulating together. It was not so long ago. But it feels that way, and truth is not subject to reality.
</p>
<p>
    “What if we did what?” Draco says.
</p>
<p>
    “Pretend.”
</p>
<p>
  And then the world closes in. Truth, reality, and every potential thread of fate fall together. What does it matter if it’s real?
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. alethophobia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I’ve never pretended with you,” Draco says, and Harry’s heart goes cold, then solar hot. What does that mean? <i>What does that mean?</i> “You expect me to be able to start now?”</p>
<p>Harry shrugs. “I have never expected <i>anything</i> from you.”</p>
<p>Draco narrows his eyes, and all of the sudden he looks… lost. He looks like that same boy who huddled with his parents at the last battle, afraid and hopeless and pathetic. But there’s never been anything pathetic about Draco, even when his situation called for it. Draco would never allow himself to be pathetic. </p>
<p>But he looks it now. Like he’s given up. Like there’s a part of him that can still sit outside the nature of the bond and look down on it, can see what a blasphemy it is to his own life, to his future and his magic. The Draco that hates that he’s in love with Hermione, resents her for it as much as he loves her. The Draco who would tell Harry to fuck off rather than kiss him because he doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction. Remembering that almost brings a smile to his face. It feels like so long ago. </p>
<p>“I suppose it couldn’t hurt to try,” Draco finally allows.</p>
<p>Harry gives him a small smile, even though his world is currently imploding, in multiple universes, simultaneously, over and over, like a very exhausting Big Bang GIF. It feels like his whole world has become this Big Bang, nothing else matters except this singularity of Draco, Draco, Draco. He’s barely looked at his own research in the last couple of weeks—the study of his mother’s love saving his life, once something all-consuming, completely forgotten in the face of this new struggle.</p>
<p>He’s never thought he was the kind of person to just blow his whole life over a relationship, and yet here he is. Giving up on his own work for a man. Losing sleep over his own misery. Hiding himself from his friends. Denying his own heart for a job. Just a regular cunt. He deserves this, he really does. </p>
<p>“I’m such a cunt,” Harry mutters, running a hand through his hair.</p>
<p>Draco snorts, his eyes crinkling for the first time in weeks. “You definitely are.”</p>
<p>Harry looks up at him, a small smile on his lips. “Okay, so… right. Would you like some dinner? I brought takeaway.”</p>
<p>Draco eyes the brown bag on his coffee table. “Thai again?”</p>
<p>“I’m pretty predictable,” Harry admits. He pulls a small package from his pocket and unshrinks it. “Remember that time you told me rice noodles pair best with aromatic white wines?”</p>
<p>“So you brought an albarino,” Draco observes, picking up the bottle to study the label.</p>
<p>“Well,” Harry says, pulling out and unshrinking several more packages, “I really don’t know what the fuck an aromatic white wine is, so I also got something called a harslevelu, a dry reisling—that one I recognized—and a pack of lager because I’ve seen how you can clear a bottle of wine and I knew we’d need backups.”</p>
<p>“You are such a cunt,” Draco says, but there’s a smile behind the words. A soft, nearly-there memory in his eyes, something nostalgic and not quite <i>there</i>, except in a shared history. “Let’s start with the riesling.”</p>
<p>Harry pops it open and pours them both a glass. He divvies up the noodles and tosses all the lime wedges onto Draco’s plate without comment. If he doesn’t let himself look beyond his blinders, it almost feels like it used to. It almost feels <i>real</i>.</p>
<p>He swirls his fork to gather some noodles and pushes it in his mouth. They say that scent ties the strongest to memory, that only a handful of aromatic particles passing by your olfactory neurons can zip straight past the thalamus to a centre of your brain connected to the amygdala and hippocampus, thereby triggering intense and vivid memories. Walking by jasmine in bloom reminding one of their childhood. The oud of broom polish sending an injured player into terrifying flashbacks of a fall. </p>
<p>A mother’s love connected to the milky smell of her newborn, triggered again anytime another newborn is nearby, no matter how old her own child is. </p>
<p>Harry knows all about love. Just not his own. He knows hearts. Just not his own. And not Draco’s. Not anymore.</p>
<p>But he can do this for Hermione, for Draco. And if he’s honest with himself, there is a sick sort of selfishness in this act of altruism. There is a desperate desire to connect this scent-memory of lime and peanut sauce and white wines he can’t pronounce to anything other than the last time, when he’d ended up with his legs wrapped around Draco’s back, his head falling backwards off the sofa as Draco thrusted into him, the intense, too-much-not-enough ache of being right on the edge but refusing to come because he didn’t want it to end.</p>
<p>
  <i>”Say my name,” Draco pants against his neck, sweat dripping, running down to Harry’s clavicle. Harry squeezes his eyes tight as Draco arches into him, his breath hitching in desperate whines, the scent of lime and ginger and God-I-love-you the only things Harry can focus on. </i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>I want you, Harry thinks. I want you more than I wanted to live in the Forbidden Forest. I want you more than myself, and I don’t know what that means.</i>
</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>mythomania</b>: (n) an uncontrollable urge to lie, in this case, to oneself.]</p>
</blockquote><i>”Draco,” Harry moans. “Draco, Draco, Draco.”</i><p>This will work, Harry thinks. He just needs to enjoy tonight enough to override the previous memory. If there is one thing he’s learned from working in Love, it’s that love is a finicky thing. If a bond can destroy it, then so can sheer bloodymindedness.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>alethophobia</b>: (n) an unwillingness to come to terms with truth or facts.]</p>
</blockquote>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. algophilia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>This fic is now explicit.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He doesn’t enjoy it enough. Or rather, he enjoys it too much. Tomorrow, he’ll blame it on the harslevelu—a dry varietal from Hungary, Draco tells him over dinner—but the day after, he’ll know it’s a lie. </p><p>The truth is that he is here, on Draco’s posh sofa, with two bottles down between them and three cans of lager empty on the coffee table. The truth is that as Draco is telling him, a bit sloppily, about the manic feelings he’s been having since the bond, and how much he hates it, that Harry looks over at him, catches that same pissed-off snarl that had always given him such a hard-on, and just, kinda lunges. </p><p>It’s sloppy and ill-considered but in that moment, Harry is drunk enough that he doesn’t remember why he should care about a bond, that Draco has one, or even, really, what a bond is. He just sees the man he loves with his lip curled in offended anger, and he wants to kiss him and then suck him dry and then kiss him again.</p><p>Tomorrow, Harry will ask himself over and over if Draco had been as drunk as him. If he’d been drunk enough to forget it all and just see <i>Harry</i>, or if he’d not been drunk at all, and had instead seen <i>opportunity</i>.</p><p>Draco is many things, but impetuous would never be one. Even in his most in-love, Harry knows Draco is not one to neglect an opportunity to <i>weigh his odds</i>. </p><p>And <i>what’s the worst that could happen?</i> Harry would tomorrow picture Draco thinking. Maybe it would work, and if it doesn’t—oh well, there’s always the bond. They’re both cunts, really. Dumb ones.</p><p>But regardless, Draco allows it. Harry turns his head and noses at his neck, the familiar botanical scent of Draco’s homemade bar soap—Potions Masters were twats like that—the warmth of his scent after a long day, the smell of lime and peanut sauce and the harslevelu, which Harry’s never had before tonight. Harry breathes it all in and in that moment, his heart fairly <i>clangs</i> in his chest as scent-memory overwhelms him. Why haven’t they been doing this? It feels like waking up or going to sleep, both at once. Dreamy and confusing and somehow unreal. When magic has stopped feeling magical to Harry, there will always be Draco.</p><p>He breathes in, feels his eyes sting as he breathes out but he’s too drunk to know why. The part of him that’s still sane knows this is important, but the rest of him just feels a great, pathetic sort of yearning. He presses his lips to Draco’s neck and Draco tips his head back. The neediness intensifies, overwhelming and painful and Harry isn’t sure why but he makes a small sound and kisses harder, running his hands up Draco’s arms and then swinging one leg over to straddle him. Harry leans down, bringing their mouths together and he kisses Draco with everything he’s got. His fingers curl in soft, familiar hair. His thighs tighten around familiar hips. His nose brushes against familiar skin. Draco wraps his arms around him, pulling him in and Harry could cry from this contact. He’s been so alone, and he could’ve had this. </p><p>He kisses Draco again and again, grinding himself into Draco and gasping at the pleasure of doing this again, of knowing another body as well as his own. Draco arches into him, his fingernails digging into the flesh beneath Harry’s ribs, pulling mercilessly as if he’d rip Harry’s kidneys out if it got them closer. </p><p>It’s too much, much too much, and never enough. Harry pulls away, gasping, angles his mouth to Draco’s collarbone and works shaking fingers against the buttons of his shirt. They come apart as Harry kisses down, down. He slithers backwards off Draco’s lap, kneeling before him and burying his face against the wool of Draco’s trousers, heated with Draco’s own arousal just beneath. Harry mouths at it, trying to figure out why he feels delirious and terrified at the same time. Too much to drink, he suspects as he undoes the fussy buttons on Draco’s fly.</p><p>Draco obligingly lifts his hips for Harry to tug his trousers and pants down, his long fingers tangling in the messy curls on Harry’s head. Harry doesn’t stop to think before he lowers his mouth to Draco’s cock. It’s just like he remembers… better. There is something strange about the eroticism of taking another person’s flesh in your mouth, the weight of it, the heat of it, the odd way it fills something not evolutionarily designed for it. Harry closes his eyes, relaxes his throat as he sinks down. Is he perverse to enjoy this so much? To feel complete only when he has to consciously <i>not choke</i> on Draco’s cock? </p><p>There is either something very wrong with him or something very right. He doesn’t care. He lets himself bob up and down, as drunk and wavy as his movements, letting Draco’s small whines and sharp breaths guide him. He relaxes into the pull of Draco’s fingers in his hair, the unbearable urge of his own dick, aching and leaking while he refuses to touch himself. </p><p>He always likes to finish Draco first, so he can be fully present, hear every sound, taste every inch. After, only after Draco unloads himself in Harry’s mouth will he reach down with trembling hands and touch himself, or so he can flip Draco back and bury himself to the hilt in his body. He’ll decide when he gets there. </p><p>Draco’s moans intensify, his voice lifting with each breath. His nails dig into Harry’s scalp and his hips angle up. Harry would smile if his mouth weren’t full of cock. So instead he tightens his lips around Draco and swirls his tongue and sucks for all he’s worth. Draco arches up with a bitten-off cry, Harry’s mouth floods with his come. </p><p>The pressure in his own cock is too much. He shoves his hand down his pants and wraps it around himself. The tip is slick and leaking; he swipes it up his shaft and his eyelids flutter with pleasure as his hand glides up and down. Draco’s come fills his mouth, dribbling out the sides as Harry does his best to keep his mouth on Draco’s cock while he pulls himself off. He’s so close, God so close, and—</p><p>He comes, hard, his whole body jerking with the pent-up desire and pleasure and love he feels for this man. God, he wants to do this to Draco every single day, forever and ever. He pulls off, smiling dazedly. God, he needed that.</p><p>Harry sits back on his haunches and looks up at Draco. He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. Draco stares at him for a long moment, his lips parted, his eyes still dilated from spent arousal. Harry’s heart double-beats once. Has it worked? It looks like it wor—</p><p>Draco stands abruptly, tucking himself sloppily back in his trousers, and bolts from the room. Harry blinks, his limbs going cold. Oh. </p><p>The door slams shut to Draco’s bedroom.</p><p>That’s about the moment when Harry realizes that Draco never said his name. Not once.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p><b>algophilia</b>: (n) a tendency to be aroused by pain, which is fucking surely what Harry has.</p>
</blockquote>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. mnemophobia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Draco?” </p>
<p>The room is dark. Draco’s shape is a black silhouette against a dark bed, dark walls. His hair greys against the duvet, shadowed and a mess. His shoulders tense, and Harry watches, macabrely fascinated as the tension travels down his spine. </p>
<p>“Don’t.”</p>
<p>Harry hesitates in the doorway. Draco’s voice hasn’t been that void since the beginning of eighth year. His shadow disappears against the dark wall, and even as his eyes adjust, everything feels black and cold. </p>
<p>“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Harry insists.</p>
<p>Draco is silent for a long moment. In the space left unfilled, Harry recalls every moment they’ve ever not spoken, every angry silence and please-say-sorry-first deliberation. But he has never felt desperation like he feels now. </p>
<p>What if he’d done things differently? What if he’d shown Draco enough love before all this to prevent the bond from snapping into place? What if he’d <i>told</i> Draco, so that Draco had had that surety to cling to as the magic fought for dominance with his own agency? </p>
<p>What if he’d loved harder? What if he’d not been a hollow, echoing thing that used Draco to fill all his gaps and valleys left behind from the war? What if the love he’d studied had been his own, and not his mother’s?</p>
<p>Or… </p>
<p>“I guess you can still cheat on someone even if you’re in love with them,” Draco finally says. </p>
<p>It used to be that when Draco spoke, the whole room lit up, every synapse in Harry’s brain sparking like fireworks. But this room is still dark. Harry clenches his fists at his side, mute with fury and hurt. He is acutely aware of both how little he means to Draco right now and how much he <i>used to</i>.</p>
<p>And yet: <i>How fucking dare you,</i> he thinks, impotent and unwanted. <i>How dare you not see the cruel irony in your thoughtless words. How dare you say them anyway, when </i>you know,<i> you know.</i></p>
<p>“Are you sure?” Harry bites out. “Are you sure it’s <i>Hermione</i> you’ve cheated on, and not me? Not me, who’s been in your bed and your mouth and your hands and your body? Not me, who’s woken up kissing your ribs or patched you up after mania? Not me, who’s kept this secret for a job you love just as much as I do, and who’s now suffering in silence while Ron tells me there’s no way I can ever know how he feels and Hermione’s telling me to take one for the team, and you’re telling me I’m <i>nothing</i> to you?”</p>
<p>Draco doesn’t speak. Doesn’t un-tense. Doesn’t move at all. </p>
<p>Harry shakes his head, swipes angrily at his eyes with the back of his hand. He doesn’t deserve this. He isn’t perfect, but he isn’t a punching bag. He owes them nothing. He is no one’s hero anymore.</p>
<p>He just has to forget. The first step is to leave.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p><b>mnemophobia</b>: (n) a fear of memories.</p>
</blockquote><p>Draco’s door slams behind him. He has never Disapparated so hard in his fucking life. Better make the last one a good one, he thinks.</p>
<p>He is no one’s hero.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. thanatophobia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Nigella is sick. Wolpertingers turn black when they’re dying. A darkness to help them hide in shadows while their bodies fight. It starts cloud-grey with a cold and then it darkens with severity. Nigella is charcoal—critical, still breathing, still nursing. </p>
<p>Her kits cuddle into her, little bright white blotches against laboured-grey breathing, sharing their warmth even as they drink from her. Harry stands in the doorway, stunned, thoughtful. <i>This is a mother’s love,</i> he thinks. <i>Giving and giving until there’s nothing left of you.</i> What’s the point of studying something so fucking obvious? Why is there a whole section of the Department devoted to this?</p>
<p>“You were fine,” Harry whispers from the doorway. He glances at Randy, curled close against her back, white and hale, his pink nose draped over her shoulder. He eyes Harry with red, blank eyes—not accusing, but close to it. Nigella’s eyes don’t open for him. She doesn’t lift her head. </p>
<p>Harry pushes the lab door fully open and steps into the room. The lights brighten with his presence, but all it does is highlight just how dark Nigella is compared to her family. He steps closer, terrified of setting Randy off or his touch somehow sucking the last bit of life from Nigella. When he’s close enough, Harry leans over the pen, his hand hovering inches from her body. So close he can feel the tepid warmth from her body, like all her life is leaking out slowly and there’s not much left to go. </p>
<p>“What happened?” he whispers, and he knows it’s stupid, fruitless. As impotent as he is himself. If Ron were here, he’d know what to do. Best healing spells on the force, Ron has; it’s how he got promoted so fast. Harry waves his wand slowly above her, running diagnostic after diagnostic. Everything comes back <i>normal</i>. </p>
<p>No viral infections, no bacterial. No cancer. No poison. No injury. No stroke or aneurysm, no thrombosis. Just one quiet organ shutting down after another. Intestines first, then lungs, and now her heart has slowed to an erratic, weary pace. Like an Avada Kedavra victim, there is nothing wrong with Nigella except that she’s dying. </p>
<p>Desperate, Harry casts one last diagnostic—and there it is. A broken heart. </p>
<p>His own crumbles, a sudden, visceral memory of Hedwig flashing in his mind before he pushes it away. His bloodstream floods with self-hatred and regret. He should’ve let her fly ahead. He fucked up, and he lost her. And in that moment, he realizes he loves Nigella as he’d loved Hedwig, and he can’t lose them both.</p>
<p>“What happened?” he whispers again, just as helpless as before. The rest of her family are all healthy, bright white and sparkling as healthy Wolpertingers do. Her babies are snuggled close and warm and—</p>
<p>But no. Not all of them. These were not Nigella and Randy’s first litter. There had been one other a year ago, a set of two. But Fred had died and George grew up.</p>
<p>Harry counts the days and feels faint when he remembers: two years ago today, Fred died.</p>
<p>Had they cursed her by naming her first litter—just two—in honour of a set of twins who’d always live on, even while one was dead? It had taken Nigella months to brighten, and a full year to whiten after Fred’s death. </p>
<p>“You remember,” he realizes, and of course she does. <i>She’s a mother</i>. “And even though you love these three here, there’ll always be a place where he was.”</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>thanatophobia</b>: (n) the fear of someone you love dying.]</p>
</blockquote>He knows the feeling of giving everything you have until you’re empty. He knows what it’s like to love something that isn’t there. But there is nothing he can do to bring Fred back, and there is nothing he can do to save Nigella if she can’t save herself. He climbs into the pen and lowers himself onto the straw and alfalfa, curling up behind Randy and bringing his hand up to gently stroke Nigella’s side. He murmurs to her as they lay there.<p>Words of love and support and promises of treats. An open hutch out back of Grimmauld—he’ll even hire Neville to spruce it up. Endless carrots. Endless thistle. Endless ale. Whatever she wants.</p>
<p>Her magic feels like it’s leaking downwards, into the floor, into nothing. To Fred, Harry realizes. She’s leaking out her lifeforce to try to bring him back, but it won’t work. You can’t resurrect the dead.</p>
<p>“If you live through this, girl, I will give you anything you want.” <i>But I can’t give you Fred.</i></p>
<p>But she just lays there, breath snuffling and erratic, and as Harry closes his eyes and <i>wills</i> her to keep breathing, he thinks that he knows exactly how Lily Potter’s magic saved him. It was literally her magic. Her death sent it to him and together with his, overwhelmed Voldemort’s. </p>
<p>And if he isn’t careful, he will give his magic to Draco, too.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. aboulomania</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ron comes home. He always does. He’s got a special sort of domestic magic, made for warm hearths and big families, and a keen intuition when someone he loves needs him. </p><p>“Who let you down here?” Harry says, surprised how scrape-y his voice sounds. Nigella’s still here, still breathing. He can’t tell if his eyes are just dry and painful or if her coat is a little lighter this morning. He blinks up as Ron comes into focus and is surprised to see that there’s no mania in his eyes today.</p><p>Ron peers in, red hair dull until the atmospheric magic senses him and lights the torches. “There you are,” he says. He doesn’t sound like a man who’s come back from a second honeymoon. Then again, he doesn’t sound like a man who’s having to deal with the fallout of his wife forced into an emotional affair, either. He sounds like Ron—sturdy, earthy, dependable Ron. “I nicked Hermione’s badge and Apparated home this morning. Dreamed you were having a rough go of it. Looks like I was right.”</p><p>“You always are,” Harry says, idly running his fingers across Nigella’s coat. At some point during the night, he’d coaxed her into drinking some water and nibbling at a celery stick, but she’s back to sleeping. </p><p>Ron approaches the pen, frowning down at Harry and the Wolpertingers. He’s always been a bit strange since coming into contact with the brain tank during their battle in the Department all those years ago. The effects had come on slowly, weirdly… a mania that built and built until he had his first episode. The intuition didn’t come with it, but it was heightened by it. Ron’s always been psychic. It’s just that now he knows it. </p><p>“Heartbreak?” Ron guesses. (A lie—he’s psychic. And perfectly present.)</p><p>Harry hmms in acknowledgement. Randy’s off in the corner, sorting the kids’ breakfast out, pulling carrot sticks and alfalfa from the dish and depositing it on the floor for them to tear into. A rare break for Nigella. </p><p>“Two years since they lost that kit, huh?” Ron continues, bending down to add his hand to the strokes along Nigella’s side. Harry’s fingers brush Ron’s and the warmth from his freckly hands is the first been of sunlight Harry’s felt in weeks. When everything is shit, there will always be Ron.</p><p>“How are you?” Harry manages, while Ron continues studying Nigella’s breathing, palpating her stomach and so on. “Did it help?”</p><p>Ron glances up to meet his eyes then shifts them down to Nigella again before his expression has time to change. “She tried,” he says. He swallows. “She tried really hard.”</p><p>Harry squeezes his eyes shut. Had Draco tried really hard, too? He supposes he must have, to allow Harry—</p><p>He can only nod, a shaky breath leaving him and in that moment he isn’t sure who he’s most sad for. Himself? Nigella? Ron? They’re all having a shit go of it. </p><p>“Are you angry?” Harry asks.</p><p>Ron holds his gaze this time. “Are you?”</p><p>And Harry knows he knows. His breath shudders again and he grits his teeth but the answer comes out anyway. “Yes.” He swallows. “I’m so fucking angry.”</p><p>“It’s not their fault,” Ron says. His lips press to a thin line. He’s reminding himself as much as Harry.  “It’s not Hermione’s fault. It’s not Draco’s fault. It’s not our fault.”</p><p>“But we suffer for it anyway,” Harry bites out. Tears really are hot when they hit your face, he realizes. He’d never considered it, but they are. They feel hot when the rest of him is as cold as the grave, and his heart might as well be in one. “I hate it so much, Ron.”</p><p>Ron rubbs vigorously at his face, leaving his skin red and his expression raw. “You were never going to tell us, huh?” he says mildly. “Even now… you were going to let me think I was the only one really having a shit time—it sucks for Draco and Hermione, but at least they aren’t feeling <i>heartbreak</i>, right? And you just let me sit in the Leaky and tell you you couldn’t understand how it felt.”</p><p>“What else could I’ve done?” Harry says, voice dull. Nigella’s not getting any brighter, is she? It was just a trick of the light. “No work romances. We would’ve both been sacked. We never would’ve finished our research. And Draco’s been working on manias to try to help <i>you</i> all this time, you know. I couldn’t ruin that. I thought about it—I thought about it constantly, but I just… I couldn’t make the decision. I didn’t fucking commit.”</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>aboulomania</b>: (n) a pathological indecisiveness.]</p>
</blockquote>Ron frowns. “Mania is a part of me now. If I’m never ‘fixed’ it won’t bother me, Harry. I don’t even remember what it was like not having it. You know that right?”<p>Harry looks away. “I just didn’t want to take away your <i>options</i>... And I was too selfish to quit myself. I thought my research was important, too.”</p><p>“Your mother’s sacrifice?” Ron asks. Harry nods. Ron exhales heavily. “That’s important, too. Just in a different way.”</p><p>Harry glances at him, and Ron rolls his eyes. “It’s important to you, you wanker. You do realize you’re allowed to have life goals, right? Other than living through the Killing Curse twice?”</p><p>Harry, the bigger person, ignores him. </p><p>“So you were both going to hide your relationship forever and just let me find out about it from a prophetic dream of you sucking off Malfoy and then feeling shit about it.”</p><p>“Looks that way,” Harry mutters. “Don’t know why you bothered to have a prophetic dream about it <i>now</i>.”</p><p>“The Fates don’t let me in on that much,” Ron says, shrugging. “I am but a lowly oracle.”</p><p>“Oh, fuck off.”</p><p>Ron gives him a smile, and it’s almost not a sad one. “So now that Sybil has spoken through me, what are we going to do about all this?”</p><p>“I’ve figured it out,” Harry says. “You’re going to hate it.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. phobophobia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I've updated the chapter count to 21. I'm also updating the tags, as I've finished the fic. I'll post the remaining chapters tonight so hang in there folks, as there is still some angst to go. And by some, I mean a lot.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“The bond is permanent, built on dislike, in order to save a marriage or another tense relationship. Popular back when arranged marriage bonds were still legal and blood feuds happened between more than just Malfoys and Weasleys.”</p>
<p>Ron gives him a very narrow look. “I offered to terminate that when Dad made me head of the family, you know. It was Malfoy who said he wanted to keep it for ‘nostalgia.’” </p>
<p>Harry cracks a small smile. “Draco’s an arsehole.” </p>
<p>There’s a brief pause, and then Ron says, “I hope you weren’t waiting for me to disagree.”</p>
<p>“No, just… gathering myself,” Harry says, sighing. Nigella sighs, too. He supposes he should thank her for her sacrifice. It is, after all, what clued him in. “It creates a mania,” Harry continues, feeling Ron’s eyes immediately snap to him. “A mania built on <i>loss</i>, not love. A love that grows stronger <i>because of the loss that caused it or was used to create it</i>. It saves families from heartbreak by siphoning unnecessary love into something productive. It’s just that the unnecessary love used to come from dead partners and families. It gives that love to the survivors so that they can build something new. So that magic doesn’t die.”</p>
<p>His fingers curl into Nigella’s fur as she takes a particularly laborious breath. She is giving her magic to make sure <i>these kits</i> live. She can’t bear another loss. Lily Potter couldn’t bear Harry’s loss. </p>
<p>He was right—there <i>is</i> a magic in the knowledge of loss. And it’s ripe to be harvested if you’re willing to make the sacrifice. </p>
<p>Is he? </p>
<p>Is Ron?</p>
<p>“I have manias,” Ron whispers, licking his lips. He settles himself on his knees, hands rubbing restlessly against his jeans. Harry watches the movement with a familiar detachment. He’s seen this maneuver before. He knows what follows it. </p>
<p>“Don’t,” Harry says, stilling him with a hand around his wrist, gentle though because Ron needs gentleness when he’s on the precipice. “I need you here, with me. For just a few more minutes, okay?” </p>
<p>Ron nods, his eyes a bit wider than normal but the pupils aren’t yet blown. </p>
<p>“The bond wants to be on the two who need it most. Who need its <i>stability</i> most. We need to show it that <i>we</i> are most unstable without—without the people we love. We need to—” He pauses, swallowing. “We need to show it we dislike them enough to be a stronger danger.”</p>
<p>Ron shakes his head, eyes widening even more and Harry knows he only has a few minutes. The words come tumbling out, faster than he’d planned, but this is good. Ron’s mania is good. They need this. </p>
<p>“Ron,” Harry says sternly. “You need to dislike her. You need to find it in yourself to dislike her enough that you would make her miserable if you had a chance. Miserable like she’s made you, yeah? Remember? Miserable enough that you’re a clear danger, and the two of you would cause instability between not just yourselves but your whole family. It’s bigger than you. And when you’ve got that, <i>then</i> you can let the mania come, Ron. Only then, do you hear me?”</p>
<p>Ron’s mouth moves, a distinct panic shuddering through him as he stares at Harry and process this faster than he should have to, but not as fast as the impending mania wants him to. “What about you?” he says, voice hoarse. </p>
<p>“I can do it,” Harry says. He has his own ways to create his own reality. That is, after all, what this bond is all about. </p>
<p>“And then we can move Malfoy’s bond to me, and she’ll love me again,” Ron prompts, just this side of hysterical. They really don’t have much time now. </p>
<p>Harry nods. “Yeah, she’ll love you just as much as before. <i>More</i>.”</p>
<p>Ron shakes his head. “But what about you and Malfoy? Does he—does he <i>know</i> you loved him before?”</p>
<p>Harry’s heart skips a beat. “No,” he says. “I never told him.”</p>
<p>“And he never told you,” Ron deduces. Harry shakes his head. Ron stands as if he’d been pulled by magic. “And you’re just going to bond yourself to him with a spell based on <i>dislike</i> and <i>instability</i>?! Are you fucking mad? How can you sign yourself up for this? You would never be able to live with never knowing if it was <i>real</i> or not. You can’t do this, Harry!”</p>
<p>“It is real, though,” Harry says, meeting his eyes even though he’d not moved from his position lying next to Nigella. “It’s always been real. At least for me.”</p>
<p>“Oh, god,” Ron whispers, and then he’s gone, pulled into his own head, mania overtaking him. His blue eyes go sybil-pale and the Unspeakable in Harry watches it, detached, curious, while inside, he is screaming. He has never been the one to push Ron into an episode before. He hates himself for doing it, knowing it would happen. He can’t examine this yet. He’s afraid to. He’s afraid of what he’ll see, what he’ll <i>know</i>. He’s afraid of the fear he’ll have for himself when he does it. He is, at the end of it all, terrified.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>phobophobia</b>: (n) fear of being afraid.]</p>
</blockquote>This is a living nightmare, but he is an Unspeakable. So it’s a living nightmare they will all learn from. Merlin fucking help them. He just has to get them through this.
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. hedonophobia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>from here forward, I suspect there will be a sharp divide in people who hate this fic and people who love it.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Apex isn’t pleased to see him, especially at four in the morning and especially with Ron staring and manic in the spare chair in Harry’s office. Harry doesn’t know what he’s thinking right now, but he’s committed to worrying about it later. If there is one thing he’s learned from Nigella, it’s that there is a time for grieving and a time for action. She’d saved her grief until her kits were nearly weaned, ready for the world… no longer in need of her. Harry can do the same.</p><p>“What have you uncovered?” she asks, but with Ron in the room, she’s got her full <i>air of mystery</i> firmly in place. Spells are so thick around Narcissa Malfoy that Harry can’t see her form or make out her face or catch the timbre of her voice. Even Draco wouldn’t be able to recognize her, despite the blood magic that they’ve all used. </p><p>“I can transfer the bond to two other people. Willing people.”</p><p>Apex sits, back straight and dignified like a statue with the face chipped away by time. “Unspeakable Weasley’s husband will overtake Draco’s end of the bond,” she guesses, nodding. “How will it work?”</p><p>“The circumstances need to be just right,” Harry says. “The substitutes will need to be in a state of mania and there must be a feeling of—great dislike for Hermione and Draco.” Briefly, he outlines the particulars of the research, what they’ve discovered and what Harry’s figured out after a long night laying on a stone floor with his dying Wolpertinger and a bit of straw. </p><p>“And who will undertake Unspeakable Weasley’s end of Unspeakable Malfoy’s bond?” She knows the answer. She doesn’t need to ask. But no one would ever call Narcissa Malfoy <i>sympathetic</i>.</p><p>“I also wish to tender my resignation,” Harry whispers. “As I will be unable to continue to abide by the Department’s first covenant of no interpersonal relationships.”</p><p>Apex looks up sharply, just a quick movement of her hood. “You have research.”</p><p>“I’ve finished it,” Harry says. “I know the answer.”</p><p>He can feel Narcissa studying him, even though her face is a featureless wash of grey and static. “The knowledge of potential loss is stronger than love alone,” she surmises. “Sacrificial magic has always asked something of the caster. How is this the answer to your survival at the wrong end of a Killing Curse?”</p><p>“She put her loss into me,” Harry says. “It takes more than love to enact something. It takes misery <i>with</i> love. She methodically ruminated on the loss she would feel if I were to die and channeled that misery into her magic, and into me. It created a tether to this world because her misery became <i>tangible</i> in her magic.”</p><p>“She was not the first mother to fear that deeply for her child’s life,” Apex says. “The wars left many children dead along with their parents.”</p><p>“It’s the premeditation,” Harry insists, thinking again of Nigella-Hedwig-Lily Potter. “She knew the prophecy about me meant there was a higher chance of my death, so she focused on it constantly until it was strong enough, until she could feel it in her gut and her chest could cave in from the weight of it. If she’d waited until Voldemort attacked, it wouldn’t have been strong enough. It wouldn’t have been so thick that her magic reformed around it, this one singular task.”</p><p>“How did you come to this hypothesis?”</p><p>“Nigella,” he says. “And—me. I see it reenacting itself in her. She’s part of the cycle—a cycle my mother began. She died, but her magic can’t. It keeps coming back; it keeps dying for me.”</p><p>“That is—quite a theory, Unspeakable Potter,” Apex says. </p><p>He shrugs. It took me awhile to realize it. How I’d always felt drawn to Nigella, how she reminded me so much of my owl, who died in the war. That owl was the first being to ever love me, that I ever loved. Her magic was familiar and safe. The same magic I’d feel in dreams of my mother. And Nigella has it, too. I never felt it until she started pouring it out of herself.”</p><p>There is a pause, silent, thoughtful. Apex’s head tilts. “You have spent weeks in your own misery, Unspeakable Potter. Has the—loss of my son truly become tangible in your magic now?”</p><p>He’d never noticed the feeling until he left Draco’s flat last night. There is a physical weight in him Draco caused, but it isn’t new. It hasn’t formed since the bond snapped into place. The truth is that Harry has felt this misery—this knowledge of potential futures, all fearsome and lonely—for years. Because he has always loved Draco, and he has always feared losing him, and six weeks together didn’t make that any better. Because Draco is like sunlight in the Forbidden Forest—he can shine light on a terrible path or filter through the trees in warm brushes against Harry’s skin, a gentle reminder of safety and desire. </p><p>“Draco has always been tangible in my magic,” he tells her. “Like my mother, I have had a long time to grieve a future loss that might never come, but did anyway.”</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>hedonophobia</b>: (n) a fear of feeling pleasure, likely because you’re a fucking miserable cunt.]</p>
</blockquote>Apex stares at him for a long time. She has always been deliberative. “This is a solution for Unspeakable Weasley, but are you sure that it is a solution for Unspeakable Malfoy?”<p>Harry shrugs. “No. But it’s the only one he’s got. And I—I will love him enough for both of us.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0019"><h2>19. autophobia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hermione and Draco arrive together, both looking like they’d not slept the night before. That makes four of them, then. </p>
<p>“Ron—!” Hermione gasps upon seeing him still in the chair beside Harry’s desk, head leant back against the wall as he recites some unheard thing over and over. Harry had brought him tea and the leftover biscuits from their holiday party and Ron’d given him a distracted ‘Thanks, mate,’ before returning to his thoughts. He looks up at Hermione’s voice and for a moment, his eyes flash almost-here. Then his mouth turns down into a scowl and his eyes narrow between her and Draco. “Hello, Hermione,” he sneers, and Harry breathes a sigh of relief. Ron’s been using this episode productively then.</p>
<p>She stops short. “What’s going on?”</p>
<p>“Unspeakable Potter has discovered a way to transfer your bond from Unspeakable Malfoy to your husband,” Apex says, startling them both with her presence. “It requires… a certain arrangement of events and emotions.”</p>
<p>“Dislike,” Hermione whispers, her voice crumbling. She always was the smartest witch of her age, wasn’t she.</p>
<p>She looks to Harry and he shrugs. She asked him to do what he had to do to save them. He’s doing it. Whatever it takes, whatever ruthless measures. She has always known the cost of winning. </p>
<p>Hermione slides down the wall behind her, face in her hands, but she doesn’t say no. She doesn’t call it off. Doesn’t say anything at all. Really, they both should’ve been Slytherins from the beginning.</p>
<p>“And I?” Draco says, voice tense. “I’m not naive enough to dare hope this <i>fix</i> will leave me free of my own bond. What has Unspeakable Potter decided for <i>my</i> fate, then?”</p>
<p>“I’ll take it,” Harry says. “If you want me to. Otherwise you’ll just be in love with Hermione and she’ll be in love with Ron.”</p>
<p>Draco stalks forward and grabs Harry’s robes, jerking him out of the office and slamming the door behind them. He waves his hand and a silencing spell snaps into place around him. In another life, Harry would take this moment to be aroused that Draco’s just cast a non-time-related spell wandlessly. What he’d give for another life. He has had endless chances, but they haven’t been enough.</p>
<p>Draco snatches him in, pulls him so close Harry can make out each sleep-deprived capillary in Draco’s eyes. They are nothing like Narcissa’s. </p>
<p>“You’ll take it,” Draco repeats, his white teeth sharp, so close he could rip Harry apart with those alone; he wouldn’t even need his words, but he’ll use them anyway, because Draco is Draco and those are his weapons. “How convenient for you, Potter. How <i>noble</i> of you to sacrifice yourself for me.”</p>
<p>He’s outside of himself again; there must be something wrong with him to always escape his own body when he knows something will hurt him. Is this what his mother did as she carefully, methodically, built up her own fear and misery? He studies the soft white-blond stubble on Draco’s jaw and carefully, methodically, does not remember how it feels against his inner thighs.</p>
<p>Had she studied baby Harry like this? Had she foreseen she would give her life and magic for him, just for him to give his life and magic to someone else?</p>
<p>“You can think what you want. The truth is that I’ve got enough of what’s needed to pull your bond from Hermione to me. And I’m willing.”</p>
<p>“Power?” Draco spits. “Because you’re the fucking dark-lord-killing arsehole-who-lived, right? You’ve got enough big dick magical energy to convince a permanent bond to like you <i>better</i>?”</p>
<p>“No. I just hate you enough, right now, to do it,” Harry says, still floating. Then, “And I love you enough, always, to do it.”</p>
<p>Draco rears back, stunned. “You—”</p>
<p>Harry shrugs. “I should’ve told you. I was going to. I never did. And then I couldn’t.”</p>
<p>“You… love me,” Draco says yet again, suspicious and bewildered.”</p>
<p>“Sorry,” Harry says. What else is there to say? The past has gone, along with all his wasted chances. He just isn’t sure if he’s apologizing for fucking up or for loving Draco to begin with. “I should’ve studied my own love. Maybe it would’ve saved us from this.”</p>
<p>“Us,” Draco repeats. “Because you think I loved you, too. Before.”</p>
<p>Even as a ghost like he is, somewhere exterior from his own body, he still feels the stab of those words. He’d hoped. He had. But there is nothing Draco can say that will make his own misery stronger than it already is. It’s so strong it’s expelled him from his own body, after all. There’s not enough room for all of Harry in Harry. “I’d thought… maybe. It seemed like you might.”</p>
<p>Draco pushes him away and spins around, pacing back and forth with his hands pulling at his hair. Harry hasn’t seen him like this in years. He’s always had a stronger control over manic episodes than Ron. Or maybe Ron’s just <i>strategized</i> them more.</p>
<p>“I don’t know,” he mutters. “I <i>don’t know if I did</i>.”</p>
<p>Harry swallows. “You don’t remember what you felt, but do you remember what you <i>thought</i>? Did you ever think that you… that you might?”</p>
<p>Draco shakes his head, but it’s not a negation. It’s confusion, frustration. His face screwed up and his teeth bared like he’s in physical pain. “I don’t know! I might’ve, but I don’t know!” </p>
<p>“You can choose not to do this—” Harry begins. </p>
<p>“I didn’t get a chance to choose anything!” Draco yells. He whips around, his face white and blotchy. “I never got a choice! But—but maybe I would’ve made this one. I don’t know. I don’t remember. I never got the chance…”</p>
<p><i>Neither did I</i>, Harry thinks as he watches him. <i>But I was going to.</i></p>
<p>Is it worse to have Draco and never know <i>for sure</i> if his love is real… or to not have him at all? </p>
<p>There are no take-backs in magic. Everything has a price.</p>
<p>“You have a choice now,” Harry says, surprised at the levelness of his own voice. “It isn’t a perfect choice, I’ll grant, but it is a choice. We can choose to enter this bond together, willingly, even though neither of us will ever know if it’s fully—fully <i>real</i>, but we can make it real. There <i>is</i> no truth but our own reality. The Department has taught us that.”</p>
<p>Draco lets out a small cry, his face in his hands. “Or I can choose to love a woman who loves someone else, for the rest of my life, <i>knowing</i> it’s a lie against my magic and my sexuality.”</p>
<p>“A choice between truth and heartbreak or a lie that can become your truth. You don’t know if you did or ever would’ve loved me, but you do know you didn’t mind waking up to me every morning, or going to bed with me at night. That’s… that’s something,” Harry says. </p>
<p>“It’s something,” Draco agrees, voice muffled. Finally, he pulls his hands away from his face and stares at Harry with raw eyes. “I would rather live a lie with you than with Hermione. I don’t know if it was true before, but it will be. I will love you back.”</p>
<p>Harry would’ve died happy then, if he hadn’t known he was the best of two shitty choices. But he and Draco were a good match. Two people so afraid of being alone they’ll believe a lie until it’s a reality. The Department has been good for them after all.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>autophobia</b>: (n) fear of being alone.]</p>
</blockquote>He has learned everything he needed to learn from the Department. About himself, if not magic.
  </div></div>
<a name="section0020"><h2>20. philophobia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Apex applies the bonding spell to the doorway. At one time, it had been used over thresholds and wedding arches. There’s always been a symbolism of walking through a doorway together, and magic loves symbolism. On one side, Hermione stands, Harry right behind her; on the other Draco and a manic, angry Ron. </p>
<p>They must walk through together, in opposite directions, to break their bond. Their lives head in different directions and magic understands that. Hermione looks miserable; they all do, really. She is the first to gird herself and step forward, Draco a half-step behind her. Their shoulders brush as they pass and there is a frisson of tension as their bodies touch. </p>
<p>Draco’s eyes close, but he pushes through until he stands before Harry. Harry can’t see the bond but he can feel the frayed ends trailing behind them both, reaching for one another. It’s an incompleteness in the air, a yawning hole left open that each of their magics wants to fill. Hermione takes Ron’s hand and walks him back through. There’s a moment of expectation and deliberation as magic evaluates the new tether. It sinks into Ron’s magic and heart and looks for what it needs. </p>
<p>It finds it.</p>
<p>Harry feels the exact moment that magic accepts Ron’s dislike of Hermione, his mania, the instability between them, and it <i>wants to fix them</i>. Ron comes out the other side of the threshold with clear, startled eyes, and Hermione is—she’s Hermione and she looks as in love with Ron as she did in November. </p>
<p>Harry lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Are you okay?” he asks them and they look to each other before answering, just like they used to, just like they always did. </p>
<p>“Yeah,” Ron says. </p>
<p>Hermione bursts into tears and jumps into his arms, and that’s all the answer Harry needs from her. </p>
<p>“It worked,” he says, mostly to himself. “They’re still the same.” <i>It didn’t change them.</i> And that means… it means maybe he and Draco, maybe they can—</p>
<p>He won’t think those thoughts. He turns to Draco, sees that same sharp jaw line he’s kissed so many times and he <i>hopes</i>. “Are you ready?”</p>
<p>Draco nods, lips pursed tightly. Draco’s hand slides into his and the feel of Draco’s palm against his own requires of Harry a deep breath and closing his eyes to keep from exploding in a mess of useless magic, but he holds it together. They step through the threshold together and… nothing. </p>
<p>There is no snap. No surge of magic. No bond.</p>
<p>“What—” Hermione begins.</p>
<p>“Your magic,” Ron says, quiet. “You weren’t… you weren’t in the right place, emotionally. You need—”</p>
<p>A ghost. He is still a ghost. Harry takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Yeah, you’re right.” He drops Draco’s hand to retrieve his wand. He needs to be in a state that magic can work with, something it can stabilize for him. </p>
<p>“Give me a moment,” he says, perhaps to himself, but Draco hears it anyway. </p>
<p>He’s been dead, out of his body, out of his head—where has he heard that before? He needs to be back in himself, in his own feelings, everything he’s given up to keep himself from falling over the edge since he left Draco’s flat and came into his office to find his friend dying. She’s Hedwig, reincarnated, he thinks. She’s his mother, bound to be born and die with him over and over and over again, teaching him an important lesson that he’s taken too many years to learn. But now, she is Nigella, and she is dying at the back of his office while he tries to save everyone but himself, and she deserves him to <i>feel it</i> when she dies, just as Draco deserves him to feel it when Harry binds his own heart to him, however willingly or unwillingly. Just as Harry deserves to feel that moment when his real love is sucked away to be consumed into a construct, a golem, a tangible misery built up into a sacrifice for the man he loves.</p>
<p>He will go through with this, and he will <i>never</i> know if Draco ever loved him back on his own. He will live the rest of his life in love with someone who’s in love with him, and he will never know if his reality is also truth.</p>
<p>And that makes him <i>angry</i>. For Draco. For his mother. Mostly, for himself. Because he will get what he wants in the worst possible way. He will love Draco and he will have Draco, but they could be actors, casted in hidden roles without even knowing it. The bond will make him forget he cares about this. The bond will make his love real even if it isn’t. </p>
<p>“Reducto!” he snaps, hitting Mitchell’s chair in the other room. Fuck him for doing this to all of them. A sharp sting of memory flashes before his eyes and he sees Draco surrounded by Fiendfyre. “Expulso!” he says, blasting Fields’ desk into the wall, as Sirius falls through the Veil again and again. </p>
<p>He cries out, overwhelmed by how much that <i>still hurts</i>, how much he never got to say goodbye, how lonely he’s been his whole fucking life, even surrounded by friends who love him and a community who adores him. He swipes at his eyes as Sirius falls through the Veil again. It’s not enough. </p>
<p>There’s more to attack. He makes a tense walk through Love, blasting doors off hinges, throwing chairs through charmed windows. His emotions surge up like high tide, but he’s beyond that now; he’s built his fortresses above the tide line and these childsplay spells aren’t enough anymore. He switches to spells from the Auror Academy—spells to disarm, spells to incapacitate, spells to blow hands off arms and then he stumbles as a blow hits him from behind. He falls forward, knees smacking sharply against the stone. He rolls, flinging his wand up and there is Ron, already casting again.</p>
<p>“Hit me,” Ron demands, throwing a stunner Harry easily rolls away from. He hadn’t been aiming. “You need to use heavy spells, yeah? You need to be angry? Hit me.”</p>
<p>Harry slashes his wand and a bright blue hex whips towards Ron, catching him on the shoulder. Ron grunts as his blood drips black down his bicep, but doesn’t slow. “Not enough,” Ron says, and knocks him back, his head ringing. “You got me where I needed to be for Hermione. I’ll get you there, too, mate. Stop—holding—back!” And then he swings out in an arch and a wall of flame soars right to Harry; he slides to the side but not quick enough. </p>
<p>Sirius has died a thousand times, but the pain from Ron’s flame wall as it scorches across Harry's shins pushes him forward. He yells and surges to his feet, gasping against the pain. The bone-breaking curse flies easily from his wand and he falls over, sick from seeing Draco curled away from him on his bed, miserable and not wanting him. God, it hurts so much. How could Draco—</p>
<p>“Ardenti sanguine!” </p>
<p>Ron howls before gritting out the countercurse, but Harry sees him leaving them alone in the tent and he feels like he’s breaking in half, oh god, he can’t go through this again, <i>Don’t leave us, Ron</i>, he can’t do this again—</p>
<p>They cast and parry, and elongated battle in reality as every strong memory Harry’s ever had washes over him in his head. But he’s not there, it’s not enough.</p>
<p>“Sectumsempra!” Ron yells and Harry gasps, startled, as it soars across his forearm, cleaving into his muscle. Blood pours out. He watches, fascinated, his body drifting by slowly as everything else falls away but the aching throb of a deep cut. Somewhere, he hears Hermione yelling and Ron yelling and Apex perhaps repairing some damage somewhere, unconcerned. </p>
<p>In the back of his mind, Ron leaves the tent. Sirius falls through the Veil. Hedwig dies in a flash of green. His mother screams. Nigella struggles for a breath she doesn’t want to take. </p>
<p>But this is not what he needs. He’s grown too accustomed to the curse on his magic. He can withstand the pain of his own emotions. He looks up. They’ve somehow made it back through the circle to his office. Or perhaps his office has made it back to him. The Department does what it wants. </p>
<p>He looks up, dazed, and Nigella’s looking back at him. Red eyes dull and tired. And he notices in that moment that he can <i>feel</i>her magic pouring out of her. She’s given so much that she can’t even sever the thread. There is nothing he can do for her: Nigella <i>will</i> die. </p>
<p>And perhaps, because magic is illogical and petty and poetic, she will be reborn again and she will teach him something about love again, and she will die again. He will watch her die because he has always watched her die. </p>
<p>There is nothing he can do.</p>
<p>Except help her leave.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>[<b>philophobia</b>: (n) fear of love, because it is a monstrous, harrowing thing.]</p>
</blockquote>There is just one thing left for her to teach him this cycle. He pulls himself up and crawls into her pen, blood pouring from Ron’s Sectumsempra—a good strategy, Harry thinks, detached; it should’ve been enough to anger him, to send him into his own mania. Ron has always been good at strategy. But it’d detached him instead. It’d made him <i>think</i> when he needed to feel, and now there is just one spell left, one offensive spell strong enough to pull him into himself. He touches her and Nigella lifts her head the barest fraction. She noses his hand, and a sliver of magic pushes into his palm. Even now, she tries to help.<p>“Harry,” Ron’s voice comes through and Harry looks up to see his eyes are seer-blue and he’s built a wall of flame between them and the rest of the Department. Beyond it, Draco stares wide-eyed. Hermione yells, unheard. Apex watches. Ron swallows, takes a step forward but only one. “It will work out.”</p>
<p>Harry scrunches his eyes closed. He may be hyperventilating now. His breath feels too fast, too hiccough-y, too unstable. Nigella curls into his hand, lays her head down. </p>
<p>“Avada Kedavra,” Harry whispers and green light flashes and he falls apart as a vision of Draco the first time he knew he loved him flashes through his mind. Draco letting him kiss him. Draco kissing him first. Draco sliding his hand around his waist and locking their fingers together in the staff room while they held each other quietly, no silencing spells because the Department would’ve all noticed that. Draco’s panted breaths as he undresses Harry for the first time. Draco’s unhooding and Harry discovering the Unspeakable he’s been falling for is the same wizard he’d been falling for in eighth year, having pub nights with after work and neither of them had ever known they were both apprenticing. Draco keying him to his wards. Draco leaving clothes in Harry’s wardrobe. Draco the morning Harry lost him, his soft smile, his ‘Hey, Potter’, his familiarity with Harry’s body and comfort with Harry seeing his own. Harry’s body is an agony, a too-full, claustrophobic cage of much too much. He thinks he might be screaming but he can’t be sure. </p>
<p>In all of these memories, <i>Draco looks like magic. Like the epitome of it, whatever that means. He looks like electricity could go out all over the world, and Draco would bring in enough light to see him from space. Draco is so vibrant and alive that surely even Muggles could see the aura he gives off, but are so overwhelmed by it that they give it names like St Elmo’s Fire and Aurora Borealis. From great distances, Draco’s felt even there.</i></p>
<p>Nigella is removed carefully from his lap. A strong hand wraps around his wrist and pulls him to his feet. He sees Draco who could’ve loved him and never got the chance to. He feels himself falling in love with Draco so many times it nauseates him and he leans against a strong shoulder to keep from sicking up all down his shirt. </p>
<p>There are people talking all around him but he can’t understand them, can’t hear anything but Draco laughing and saying his name. It’s like standing in the middle of a Currys with every model telly on a different football game and Draco is every team, even though Draco hates football and hate Harry’s telly and would never go to a Currys. Someone takes his hand and he is pulled forward. There is a burst of magic, and in that moment, Harry feels everything real he’s ever felt for Draco be sucked away.</p>
<p>And then it comes back.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0021"><h2>21. knowledge of after</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Harry,” Draco says, coming out of the magical furniture shop. Harry practically hears his narrowed eyes in the tone of his voice.</p><p>He reaches out absently, blindly, and Draco’s hand settles into his own as Draco comes to stop next to him. He sighs, endlessly long-suffering.</p><p>“Must you?” he says. “We have enough white fur on the sofas as it is.”</p><p>Harry pulls his eyes away from the cat. A kitten really. White fur and blue eyes looking back at him. He’s never taken himself for a cat person, precisely, but he’d just been waiting for Draco to sort out a damaged vanishing cabinet for work and he’d seen her.</p><p>“She feels like Hedwig,” Harry says. He refuses to say anything else.</p><p>He’d hoped he’d ended the cycle of his mother’s magic sacrificing itself for him. But <em>something</em> had made him turn around, walk all the way across the street, and look in the Magical Menagerie’s front window when he’d previously had no desire whatsoever for another pet, ever, in his life. He’s already got the Wolpertingers in the back garden, and they frequently eat through the veg garden, which is quite enough to be dealing with as it is.</p><p>“Your mother moved on,” Draco says quietly. “You saw her in the Forest. You <em>know</em> she’s not still here.”</p><p>“But her magic is,” Harry says.</p><p>Draco tugs his hand, and Harry turns. Draco lifts one eyebrow. “It’s only her magic if you believe it is.”</p><p>“We create our own reality,” Harry whispers back.</p><p>Draco nods. They’ve told themselves this constantly since they walked through that doorway together—the last time Harry’d ever walked out of his office at the Department. It’s summer now, six months gone, and they still tell themselves this sometimes. They remind themselves of a lot of things.</p><p>“I believe you loved me before,” Harry says, out loud, because he needs to remind himself right now. Sometimes he has to say this more than once. Lately, not as much.</p><p>Draco nods. “I did. I still do.” This is their reality.</p><p>They turn back to the cat—likely a kneazle—still staring at them from the window. Her eyes are clear and intelligent. She presses her nose against the glass. Unwillingly, Harry presses his hand back. He feels a thread, a shimmer of magic pass between them, the same magic Nigella gave him before he killed her to save himself, to save Draco.</p><p>He closes his eyes as his mother’s voice washes over him. He presses his lips together, shakes it away, pulls his hand back. “I believe you are not my mother’s magic,” Harry tells the cat. “I believe you’re a new soul, free of attachments and baggage, and you will not sacrifice yourself for me. Ever. You’ll live your own life.”</p><p>Draco presses his shoulder into Harry’s, his head tilting against him. “You broke the cycle,” Draco tells him.</p><p>It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. It’s reality. Harry nods, then tugs Draco’s hand, pulling him away from the shop, the cat, and the aching pull of Hedwig’s magic.</p><p>“Dinner now?” Draco says. “Weasley made me skip lunch today for some stupid theory she had.”</p><p>“Was it really stupid?” Harry asks. There’s no ache for his lost job anymore. It’s softened, eroded like river stones. He enjoys helping George at the shop these days, letting the real world fill in the gaps of his emotions with real things. Speaking to people, trying his hand at inventing things, being silent when George needs it. But there are times when he wonders if his work really was done. If he didn’t have more he was meant to do there.</p><p>And other times when he thinks he was only there for Draco.</p><p>“Not entirely stupid,” Draco allows. “But not worth missing lunch for.”</p><p>Harry nods. “I love you,” he says, squeezing Draco’s hand.</p><p>Draco turns and flashes him a brilliant smile. “Love you, too, Potter. Always will.”</p><p>There is just this, nothing else. If they'd had before... or... or... or.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>and we're done. </p><p>this is a flawed fic, the first wip I've written in (and posted while it was a wip) in like a literal decade. it had no outline. it had no beta. it is the raw fic, and I've presented it with all its flaws because it's the fic I needed to write right now. so despite its flaws, it tells the story the way I wanted it told way back in 2014 when I started it. </p><p>I hope you enjoyed it, despite the flaws, and despite the angst. Hopefully this ending satisfies the "mostly happy ending" promise I made in the beginning. It feels like such a subjective promise in this case. </p><p>next up is</p><ol>
<li> finishing my dramione werewolf fic that's been wip since 2014<br/>
</li>
<li> working on a retelling AU (What if Petunia Dursley hated her sister a little bit less and loved her nephew a little bit more? But was still a raging b* of course, including gay af Snape as her reluctant friend in bitterness, rescuing Sirius, dudley's suppressed magic, granny evans, petunia in the magical world sniping at everyone and getting her own way, dark-not-evil harry, loved Harry, Harry raised to not take anyone's bullshit, family magic, and slytherin harry)  - this will basically be a wank fest of every trope I like to read, spread over thousands of words<br/>
</li>
<li> and original fiction, which may make the others take a little longer. </li>
</ol><p>be sure to subscribe to my works if any of that sounds enticing!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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